Astonishing disclosures in cyber security annual report 2022 has not only issued worrying sings for the provincial government but the federal government as well.It was revealed in report that telecommunication, ICT services and cyber security provider to the government departments National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) has showed worst performance and ranked on No 9 out of 12 according to the result of CTDISR compliance audit validation by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). 

Ranking of auditees based on the compliance scoring and commitments show by the licensees towards the cyber security readiness.   NTC was currently providing telecommunication and ICT service to number of governmental departments working under federal and provincial governments included President and Prime Minister Offices. In addition it has responsibility to secure and protect the government data of the mentioned departments and safe them from any kind of cyber-attack.

NTC was providing advanced calling, broadband, data center services, web hosting, ISDN and radio wireless to government offices and their constituent units. As well as provides networking facilities. Who’s also responsible to secure the data of government departments and protect government data from all kinds of cyber-attacks, but the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has raised questions on the performance of NTC. It noted that PTA has put number of questions on the performance of NTC. 

According to report, in category-1 all mobile phones operators including the more than one license fixed line operators included Pakistan Mobile Communication. Jazz was on the top of the list with 96.63 points out of 100, after that Telenor took 2nd position with 94. 23 points. Private Telecom Operators are on the top list in terms of cyber security, NTC is at the 9th place in the list of 12 institutions in terms of Cyber Security, while it is the worst in the category. 

According to this news agency, NTC has been given the mandate to facilitate the federal government, provincial governments and all state-run institutions. It mentioned NTC was ranked 9th in a list of 12 telecom operators ranked by their network size, license types.  According to the report, category number one, which includes all mobile phone opera-tors and major fixed line operators with more than one license, is Pakistan Mobile Communications Limited (PMCL) with 96.63 points out of Jazz100.

The list was followed by Telenor Pakistan with 94.23 points, Zong third with 92.78 points, Ufone/PTCL fourth with 87.89 points, Transworld fifth with 76.74 points and 74.03 points. Sixth and last came NTC in category number two from medium to medium Major operators/ISPs are involved. This category includes medium to large opera-tors/ISPs. In category number two Redtone topped while Multinet was the runner up. The report includes an overall Cyber Security Index (CSI) for the telecom sector and also ranks telecom operators based on their level of compliance across 16 security domains, including CTDISR.

Includes 104 security controls. The report also examines the strengths and weaknesses of the telecom sector and provides an overview of key cyber security-related incidents in the past year.  When the officials of NTC were contacted they viewed that PTA's Cyber Security Annual Report 2022 has released without sharing with them. They cleared stated that PTA hasn’t told us why our points were less and for this we also sending a formally letter to PTA in this respect.  They stated that PTA authorized auditor SGS has audited and it given us 88 points.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP