VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam has
been warned that it will not succeed in building up an e-government and become
an information technology power if it cannot settle the current deficiency of
information security experts.

Lacking security experts – a serious
hole

In fact,
lacking information security experts is the big problem of almost countries
now, when the “information war” tends to escalate, and the cyberspace has
become a new “battle”. And Vietnam
is not an exception.

Nguyen Minh
Duc, Director of the Security Division of Bach Khoa Internetwork Security
Center (BKIS) said that many holes have been existing in the networks of many
ministries, branches and enterprises in Vietnam, because the agencies and
enterprises do not have the staff in charge of information security. In 2010,
about 1000 big websites were attacked by hackers. The same figure was also
reported for 2009.

The lack of
information security experts has also caused headaches to the ministries and
branches which are considered as the “pioneers” in applying information
technology. The Ministry of Finance is an example.

Le Linh
Chi, Head of the Network Management and Information Security under the Ministry
of Finance, said the units belonging to the ministry all have network
administrators, who are implementing the information security works such as
running firewalls and other security systems. However, the experts, who can
embrace all the sides of the information security and consider all aspects of
information security, are still lacking even at systematic units like the
General Department of Taxation, General Department of Customs and the State Treasury.

At the
Ministry of Finance, the Network Management and Information Security Division
has been established, but it still cannot fulfill necessary things in
information security. Right in 2007, Deputy Minister of Finance Pham Sy Danh
asked to build up a master strategy on information security, but to date, this
has not become realistic yet.

Vietnam urged to improve education and recruitment mechanism

Experts
have pointed out that one of the reasons behind the lack of information
security experts is the lack of the schools specializing in training
information security experts.

Therefore,
most of the information security officers only have general degrees in
information technology, and they only begin learning more about information
security themselves or attending specific training courses after they are
assigned to work as security officers.

“BKIS
itself also needs a big number of officers in information security. We are
organizing many training courses to serve our demand ourselves,” Duc said.

BKIS is
considering establishing a school specializing in network security training in
order to provide the labor force to government agencies and domestic
enterprises.

The lack of
information security experts is so serious in the world that many countries now
use hire hackers as well to expand the “cyber warriors”. However, what to do to
maintain the loyalty and patriotism of the hackers remains an open question.

In Vietnam, the
main channel for government agencies to recruit information security experts is
the public servant recruitment examinations. Meanwhile, this recruitment method
has not been highly appreciated due to many problems.

“Many
candidates failed to become our officers just because they did not pass the
“state administration management” exam subject, even though they had excellent
information technology skills,” Chi said.

Meanwhile,
government agencies are now facing the so called “brain-drain”. A lot of
officers, after a long period of working for government agencies, when they got
more experience, leave the agencies for private companies, which offer higher
pay.

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