Raphael John-Lall

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has wel­comed the tax break of up to $500,000 that en­cour­ages com­pa­nies to im­ple­ment soft­ware to pro­tect them­selves from the grow­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats that com­pa­nies are now fac­ing.

Two weeks ago, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced that a $500,000 tax ex­emp­tion for com­pa­nies in­cor­po­rat­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty soft­ware in­to their se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments is now in force.

Hinds made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a cy­ber­crime and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty sen­si­ti­sa­tion work­shop at the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, Port-of- Spain.

He said the tax ex­emp­tion was of­fered in the last bud­get state­ment and has been im­ple­ment­ed in an ef­fort to get ahead of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, in a state­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian, said the tax break ini­tia­tive from the Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide a much need­ed boost in the fight against cy­ber­at­tacks.

“The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) wel­comes the pro­posed tax break of up to $500,000 for busi­ness­es in­vest­ing in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures and soft­ware. This ini­tia­tive, an­nounced in the last bud­get, will sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost in­vest­ment in dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty, if im­ple­ment­ed ef­fec­tive­ly.”

The T&T Cham­ber con­tin­ued by say­ing that it is ev­i­dent that cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty de­mands greater pri­ori­ti­sa­tion, giv­en the alarm­ing surge in cy­ber­at­tacks over the past year in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors and as the ap­proach­es to these at­tacks con­tin­ue to evolve, there is a clear need for con­tin­u­ous and ro­bust strate­gies to stay ahead of emerg­ing threats.

This will be di­rect­ly aid­ed by the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the tax in­cen­tive, the Cham­ber added.

How­ev­er, the T&T Cham­ber qual­i­fied its state­ment by say­ing that it is aware of chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced by busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the cre­ative sec­tor, in terms of de­nied claims and pro­longed de­lays in ac­cess­ing oth­er tax in­cen­tives and it is hoped that this mea­sure will be ef­fec­tive­ly rolled out with­out sim­i­lar chal­lenges.

“The T&T Cham­ber is of the view that con­tract­ing ex­per­tise is a cru­cial con­sid­er­a­tion for the role that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty must play in pro­tect­ing them­selves against fu­ture cy­ber threats. More specif­i­cal­ly, the role of Chief In­for­ma­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Of­fi­cers (CISOs) be­comes in­creas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant in lead­ing the charge against cy­ber ad­ver­saries.”

The T&T Cham­ber al­so re­quest­ed clar­i­ty on whether the tax break falls un­der the cur­rent Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty and if it is ac­ces­si­ble to all com­pa­nies or on­ly those meet­ing spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria.

“We an­tic­i­pate the re­lease of com­pre­hen­sive de­tails in the near fu­ture to en­sure that busi­ness­es can ef­fec­tive­ly lever­age this tax re­lief for en­hanced cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty. As we col­lec­tive­ly nav­i­gate the evolv­ing dig­i­tal land­scape, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing all ini­tia­tives that for­ti­fy the over­all re­silience of our na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.”

Tax breaks need­ed

Own­er of Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites, Ra­jiv Shandilya, who al­so has a back­ground as a sys­tems an­a­lyst in the bank­ing sec­tor, told the Busi­ness Guardian there is nev­er enough that busi­ness­es can do and that noth­ing is ful­ly safe as busi­ness­es now op­er­ate in a dig­i­tal world and it is very ag­gres­sive in in­no­va­tion.

“What is new to­day is ob­so­lete to­mor­row. We have im­ple­ment­ed sys­tems that are se­cure to best of cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy at the mo­ment. There are very ex­pen­sive IT costs re­lat­ed to this and this now adds to an­oth­er re­cur­rent ex­pense.”

He said the tax break from the Gov­ern­ment for busi­ness­es is much need­ed at this mo­ment.

“Tax breaks are al­ways crit­i­cal in crit­i­cal ar­eas. There should al­so be no on­line tax charge as all these ser­vices are payable by cred­it card to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. This tax on cred­it card trans­ac­tions does not save the coun­try for­eign cur­ren­cy. It should be re­fund­ed as well as the tax in­cen­tive.”

An­tho­ny Row­ley, who serves as the chair­man and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of So­lu­tions In Mo­tion Lim­it­ed (SIM), a com­pa­ny based in Val­sayn col­lab­o­rat­ing with an in­ter­na­tion­al net­work of man­aged se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice providers, in a state­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian high­light­ed the new tax break and its po­ten­tial im­pact in en­abling busi­ness­es to af­ford height­ened lev­els of pro­tec­tion against the di­verse and so­phis­ti­cat­ed cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at­tacks that or­gan­i­sa­tions com­mon­ly face.

Row­ley sees the in­cen­tive as a pos­i­tive step for­ward and he sug­gests that this in­cen­tive is just one of sev­er­al mea­sures the Gov­ern­ment should un­der­take to ad­dress and mit­i­gate the grow­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats faced by or­gan­i­sa­tions in the coun­try.

He ad­vo­cates for a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach, in­di­cat­ing that fur­ther strate­gies and man­dates may be nec­es­sary to pro­pel busi­ness­es to­wards achiev­ing a high­er lev­el of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

While So­lu­tions In Mo­tion con­tin­ues to ex­plore av­enues for cost-ef­fec­tive cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, Row­ley em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of recog­nis­ing that even small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es are sus­cep­ti­ble to sig­nif­i­cant cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Row­ley en­cour­ages more or­gan­i­sa­tions, ir­re­spec­tive of their size, to con­sid­er lever­ag­ing their ser­vices.

Chair­man of ACE Strate­gic So­lu­tions, Ri­car­do Fras­er who al­so serves as Vice Pres­i­dent of the ISC2 Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can Chap­ter sent the Busi­ness Guardian a state­ment which said that the $500,000 tax in­cen­tive will in­crease the like­li­hood of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

“Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty soft­ware and net­work se­cu­ri­ty mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment by iGovTT will in­crease the prob­a­bil­i­ty that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of such tech­nolo­gies will mit­i­gate the like­li­hood and im­pact of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats. It is one com­po­nent of a strat­e­gy that will spur busi­ness to take prac­ti­cal mea­sures to im­prove their cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture and re­silience to at­tacks. To re­alise the ben­e­fits com­pa­nies will need to on­board qual­i­fied staff and ser­vice providers who can main­tain and use the tech­nolo­gies ef­fec­tive­ly”.

Fras­er al­so strong­ly ad­vised busi­ness to make in­vest­ments in im­prov­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of their strate­gic hu­man re­sources.

“In­vest­ments by com­pa­nies must in­clude op­er­at­ing se­cu­ri­ty aware­ness and train­ing pro­grammes (SE­TA) and spe­cialised cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty train­ing to de­vel­op ca­pa­bil­i­ty of all staff to pre­pare, rec­og­nize and re­spond to threats.”