NextGen Day

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has directed the country’s main revenue-generating agencies – the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) – to strengthen their respective systems against hacking and other cyber threats, expressing concern about the rising number of financial consumer scams perpetrated online.

During a recent Department of Finance (DOF) Executive Committee (Execom) meeting, Dominguez told the two agencies, “Please make sure that your cybersecurity measures are up to date and effective against all types of threats.”

Dominguez cited the recent hacking incident involving BDO Unibank and the Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), as well as the complaints of several teachers who lost money from their Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) accounts, as evidence of the rise in cyber attacks as more Filipinos turn to online transactions to avoid face-to-face interactions in the midst of the pandemic.

LandBank has already made a statement claiming that its systems are safe from any type of hacking and that the teachers were the victims of phishing.

Phishing is a scam in which hackers impersonate legitimate banking representatives by sending fake emails or text messages via bogus bank websites in order to obtain confidential bank account information from victims, which they then use to steal or make unauthorized money transfers from their accounts.

Finance Undersecretary Antonette Tionko, who heads the DOF’s Revenue Operations Group (ROG) and oversees both the BOC and BIR, informed Dominguez that the two agencies’ current digitalization and modernization plans encompass cybersecurity.

“Please make sure that’s up to current,” Dominguez warned Tionko, “since it appears to be getting more and more prevalent.”

Dominguez had already urged DOF and its affiliated agencies to aggressively pursue their various digitalization plans to help enhance tax collections and improve public service delivery well before the epidemic broke out in March 2020.

In 2020, Dominguez directed GFIs and other DOF agencies to collaborate in developing a cost-effective defensive strategy that will protect their individual systems from potential cybersecurity threats, as well as other potential dangers and data breaches in the digital realm.

He told GFIs, state-run pension funds and insurance agencies, as well as the revenue and treasury departments, to sign memorandums of understanding (MOAs) on a shared cyber protection strategy.

This includes the LandBank, the United Coconut Planters’ Bank (UCPB), and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP); the Insurance Commission (IC), the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC), the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), and the Social Security System (SSS); and the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr), the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

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