Baguio City’s data system attacked 3M times in 2023

BAGUIO CITY — The Baguio City government's data system was attacked by cybercriminals at least three million times in 2023, but it survived all of them, the Management Information Technology Division of the Baguio City Mayor's Office said.

MITD chief Francisco Camarao said that the city's database was successfully protected by its firewall. It also warned that while attacks occur daily and get more sophisticated, there is a need to further beef up cybersecurity measures to ensure protection of the data collated from the various transactions in the city government.

Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong confirmed the vulnerability of the city's system based on the results of an assessment conducted on the city's system by a third party.

He said that failure to protect the database would mean loss of data which if translated in financial terms would cost millions of pesos. It would also be a big blow to the city's efforts to painstakingly build its data base meant to speed up the delivery of services.

"Securing data is a huge challenge. We have seen government offices and local government units here and abroad that have more sophisticated systems fall helplessly to these hackers. We may be next so we have to be proactive," Magalong said.

Aside from data loss which leads to people's privacy invasion and legal issues for the government, Camarao said that cybersecurity breach also results in data exposure which causes unauthorized access to citizens' data, identity theft and erosion of public trust in the government.  It also leads to financial loss, operational disruptions and legal problems.

Given these, a proposal was tabled for the establishment of an offsite back-up system, continuous training and improvements in cybersecurity and approval and implementation of the proposed P40 million disaster recovery system. These could "enhance system resilience, minimize vulnerabilities, strengthen overall operational efficiency and boost performance" of the system.