Vietnam's capacity to respond to cybersecurity incidents is still low.

On May 21, in Hanoi , the National Cyber Security Association (NCA) held a seminar on "The maturity level of Vietnamese enterprises and organizations in responding to incidents".

NCA data shows that nearly 53% of businesses and organizations in Vietnam do not have adequate technological solutions to respond to cybersecurity incidents, and more than 56% do not have enough specialized cybersecurity personnel. In 2024, there will be up to 659,000 different cybersecurity attacks, affecting 46.15% of agencies and businesses in Vietnam. NCA believes that most Vietnamese businesses still do not have the necessary capacity, processes or preparations to respond to cybersecurity incidents. Cisco's latest report on the state of cybersecurity said that only 11% of businesses and organizations in Vietnam have reached the maturity level of readiness to respond to incidents.

Anh toa dam 3.jpg — Mr. Vu Ngoc Son, Head of NCA Technology Research Department, spoke at the seminar.

According to Mr. Vu Ngoc Son, Head of the NCA Technology Research Department, the main reasons for Vietnam's low response capacity include: lack of basic, synchronous cybersecurity solutions to protect the system; technology, digital transformation is constantly updated, in which the explosion of AI makes it difficult for businesses to adapt; the strong development of professional cybercrime groups, including cross-border groups with very high qualifications; the shortage of specialized personnel and cybersecurity skills of the majority of users.

Anh toa dam 2.jpg — Major Tran Trung Hieu, Deputy Director of the National Cyber Security Center, spoke at the seminar.

At the seminar, Major Tran Trung Hieu, Deputy Director of the National Cyber Security Center, presented a number of recent cyber attacks that have caused great damage in Vietnam and commented that most of the incident reports were delayed to the authorities; logs were incomplete, monitoring systems were disabled; many organizations were not prepared with solutions to handle incidents, leading to passivity, such as not having a copy of data, not having an alternative plan when the system needed to be isolated....

Anh minh hoa NCA 2.jpg — Some typical cyber attacks in Vietnam recently. Source: NCA

According to Major Tran Trung Hieu, to prevent cyber security incidents, it is necessary to start improving the weakest component of each system, which is people. Cyber security awareness and skills training for each individual in the organization should be done regularly. When the entire organization has enough knowledge and skills in cyber security, other solutions such as technology and new processes can be effective.