By: Staff Writer
July 6, 2021
Jamaica’s chief of defence staff acknowledges that cyber threats can “cripple” a nation and since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) has shifted to make cyber its fourth domain of operations as he develops “cyber-warriors.”
Rocky Ricardo Meade, chief of defence staff of the JDF, speaking on a webinar for the “Naval and Maritime Security Week: Latin America & Caribbean,” said that Jamaica is beefing up its cyber security programme, adding it as a fourth new domain of operations. The other domains being Maritime, Air and domestic/land based operations.
Mr Meade also said: “Of course, we realize that a rapid transition by the public and private sectors to the cyber domain, especially during the pandemic requires a shift in focus in how to protect the digital citizen. The threat of cyber threats now has the power to cripple a nation.”
Several cyber-attacks have happened throughout the region. Most notable was the cyber-attack on the department of the registrar general in The Bahamas, where hackers got in and reviewed sensitive company registration information along with other nefarious acts. The government of The Bahamas was unaware of the attack until months later.
The Jamaican government and private sector has been victim to attacks to and is something Mr Meade highlighted. “In Jamaica, we are not exempt. We’ve had over six, two reported cases, amounting to over $30 million dollars that was appointed in 2018. We continue to have these attacks,” said Mr Meade.
He added: “Those industries that rely on the confidence of the public may not actually reveal when they’ve had cyber-attacks, but in terms of figures that were reported over $94bn JSD.”
Mr Meade also said: “We have had an attack on the Jamaica National Bank in 2020. We are aware of Australia’s challenges in 2021 and a very, very recent ransomware attack on the US fuel pipeline,”he further said that he is “not accepting” in Jamaica and the country had hired a firm in 2017 to help protect its sensitive agencies from ransomware attacks.
Often times hackers get into systems when people who use the system, unawares, let malevolent actors in. Employees or users of company information technology systems either click on a wrong email from unknown senders and open up files that have malware in them, or they are duped by similar looking emails with slightly different domain names, thinking they are from company personnel or official emails from a particular company and end up adding all of their personal information and codes to a hacker and then the damage begins.
Acknowledging this new domain of warfare in totality, Mr Meade stressed that education of officers in the JDF is critical to combatting the scourge of cybercrime as much as it is about educating the regular citizen on how to keep their data and information safe.
Mr Meade also said: “We need to manage the threats to ensure there is a robust legislative foundation to enable us to function and of course protection. We need to ensure Jamaica’s cyber capabilities are able to protect the government, businesses, citizens within cyberspace and critical infrastructure.”
To this Mr Meade added the way forward is: “Jamaica is managing this long standing security challenge with an integrated plan to secure Jamaica.
“This plan secure Jamaica is a comprehensive, coordinated, integrated, flexible and inclusive, enduring strategic programme that entirely offers a framework for effectively combating the multiplicity of threats and challenges to make the security which casts a parallel shadow on the ongoing efforts to support sustainable national development.
“This framework recognizes that the concept of security is both evolving, and dynamic moving beyond matters solely related to law enforcement and criminal justice system compass, our holistic approach, that is one in which securities in a broad human security terms and threats with issues related to energy, economics, health education, technology, and environmental stress are amongst the things we consider.”
Jamaica launched its cybersecurity plan in 2015. You can download it here, where it lists all of the essential components of how the JDF plans to tackle cybersecurity issues on a national level.
Mr Meade also said that Jamaica eyes itself to be the “leader” in cybersecurity products in the Caribbean and has launched as a product of its national cybersecurity plan a National Cyber Security building program aimed at pushing the agenda for Jamaica’s cybersecurity dominance in the region.
Also under this programme it will allow the JDF to develop a cadre of “cyber-warriors” for protecting the cyber-walls of Jamaica said Mr Meade.
