The Ministry of Information and Communications has also issued a plan to achieve this goal.

A regular task of the Ministry of Information & Communications' plan to enter the group of 30 leading countries for the Global Cybersecurity Index is to build the Vietnam network of information security products.

The national digital transformation program approved by the Prime Minister on June 3, 2020 confirmed the viewpoint: Ensuring network security is key to successful and sustainable digital transformation, an inseparable part of digital transformation in Vietnam. All equipment, products, software, information systems, and investment projects in information technology must include with mandatory components on network security right from the design step.

Under this program, Vietnam’s goal is to enter the group of 40 leading countries in the world for the ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Index in 2025 and among the top 30 countries in 2030.

In Directive 01 on the development orientation of Vietnam’s information and communication industry, the Ministry of Information and Communications emphasized that network security is the prerequisites for the development of e-Government and digital transformation, so it must move one step ahead. The Ministry assigned the Department of Information Security to develop a plan to add Vietnam into the group of 30 top countries for the Global Cybersecurity Index. This plan has been recently approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

In addition to clearly assigning tasks among the relevant agencies, the deadlines, the plan specifies tasks and solutions to improve Vietnam’s Global Cybersecurity Index, with six groups, including: (i) Legal Measures, (ii) Technical Measures, (iii) Organizational Measures, (iv) Capacity Building, (v) Cooperation; and (vi) support missions.

Under this plan, this year the Department of Information Security will complete the development of a project to protect and support children in healthy interactions on the Internet, the Decree on prevention of spam messages, spam emails, spam calls and the regulations on text-, email- and call- based advertising.

The Department of Information Security is also responsible for coordinating with the Ministries of Education and Training; Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, Science-Technology and Environment to add information security content into curricula at general schools; to organize campaigns to raise awareness about child protection on the Internet; and to promote start-ups in the field of information security.

In the period 2020-2021, the Department of Information Security will be responsible to promote the establishment of regional computer emergency response teams (regional CERT), organize drills for these teams, and encourage the teams to joint regional CERTs such as APCERT and FIRST.

Developing the Vietnam Network of Information Security Products is another important task of this agency.

The ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) is a trusted reference that measures the commitment of countries to cybersecurity at a global level – to raise awareness of the importance and different dimensions of the issue.

Based on a multi‐stakeholder approach and initiative, the GCI leverages the capacity and expertise of different organizations, with the objectives of improving the quality of the survey, fostering international cooperation, and promoting knowledge exchange on this topic. The ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) provides the general foundation and framework for the initiative.

According to GCI 2019 report, for the first time, Vietnam was listed among the group of countries and territories with a high commitment to network security, ranked 50 out of 175 countries and territories, up 50 grades compared to 2017.

M.T

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