Boost for PH Cybersecurity as PLDT & Microsoft Enter Partnership

In an effort to continue fighting against the rising cases of cybercrimes in the Philippines, telco giant PLDT Inc. recently entered into a partnership deal with Microsoft for threat intelligence sharing. The two companies are expected to collaborate through the Cyber Threat Intelligence Program (CTIP) of Microsoft which hopes to “strengthen the country’s digital borders and infrastructure security against cyber threats.”

With the CTIP, actionable cyber intelligence is collected and distributed. These may be derived from the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) botnet takedown operations as well as Computer Emergency Response Teams, Internet Service Providers and Critical Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Centers.

Data from the CTIP is then engineered into specific Microsoft products and services, which enables customers to easily identify cyber threats that are present in their environments. Under the partnership, PLDT will be granted access to cyber threat intelligence in real time from Microsoft’s DCU. This will provide information on the malware families that DCU has encountered in the past and how these affect the Philippines digital landscape.

“Our mature and sophisticated threat intelligence operations is one of the key and most robust pillars of the PLDT group’s cybersecurity structure. We are glad to partner with Microsoft to help fortify our strong cyber threat intelligence operations, and to help us better protect our customers in particular, and the country’s cyber defenses in general,” explained PLDT First Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Angel Redoble.

Andres Ortola, Microsoft Philippines Country General Manager adds that “Security is at an inflection point as cyberattacks become more sophisticated and digital attack surfaces exponentially increase. We believe that anything less than comprehensive security is no security at all.” Additionally, Microsoft is looking to invest $20 billion over the next 5 years to strengthen cybersecurity efforts and deliver advanced security solutions globally.

Source: BusinessMirror