“Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and we must work to­geth­er in pro­tect­ing our dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and pro­mot­ing a safe on­line en­vi­ron­ment…”

That state­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, at to­day’s in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Over­watch Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­tre, which is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Pre­ci­sion Cy­ber Tech­nolo­gies, Dig­i­tal So­lu­tions and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s IDB Lab,

Over­watch’s rai­son d’être is to serve the en­tire Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and pos­si­bly to ex­pand in­to the wider re­gion.

“This is the first Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (SOC) in our re­gion and marks a piv­otal mile­stone in our coun­try’s, and the re­gion’s, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty In­fra­struc­ture,” the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed.

Dur­ing his ad­dress at Over­watch’s in­au­gu­ra­tion, Dr Row­ley urged all sec­tors of so­ci­ety—gov­ern­ment agen­cies, busi­ness­es, acad­e­mia, and in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens—to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in safe­guard­ing T&T’s cy­ber­space.

Ac­cord­ing to the PM, at­tacks against a na­tion’s cy­ber in­fra­struc­ture are “a new form of ter­ror­ism”.

“The rapid ad­vance­ment of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and the par­al­lel growth of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my has in­creased our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to threats of cy­ber-at­tacks,” Dr Row­ley ob­served. 

He not­ed that the in­creas­ing preva­lence of cy­ber-at­tacks “have put many gov­ern­ments at the mer­cy of this new form of ter­ror­ism, which sig­nals the crit­i­cal­i­ty of more ro­bust coun­ter­mea­sures.”

“Our coun­try must make more se­cure and con­cert­ed ef­forts to pro­tect our sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion and sys­tems from be­ing com­pro­mised. In ad­di­tion, we are ob­serv­ing both the ex­pan­sion of our dig­i­tal foot­print, and the in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy in­to our dai­ly lives. Un­doubt­ed­ly, this will in­crease our cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties,” he added.

The Prime Min­is­ter point­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and the in­tro­duc­tion of the Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty In­vest­ment Tax Al­lowance (CI­TA) as two im­por­tant in­ter­ven­tions in the bid to re­duce this coun­try’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to cy­ber-at­tacks.

He notes that CI­TA was cre­at­ed to in­cen­tivise com­pa­nies to in­vest in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty soft­ware and hard­ware that would aid in pre­ven­tion, de­tec­tion, re­sponse and re­cov­ery. It will fa­cil­i­tate up to $500,000 in tax cred­its.

“iGovTT, the im­ple­men­ta­tion part­ner of the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, has com­plet­ed a se­ries of con­sul­ta­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tive groups across Trinidad and To­ba­go and will short­ly launch its newest App which is de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the [CI­TA] ap­pli­ca­tions process,” PM Row­ley re­port­ed.

An­oth­er crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion which the PM high­light­ed is the part­ner­ship cre­at­ed be­tween Pre­ci­sion Cy­bertech­nolo­gies and T&T’s two ma­jor uni­ver­si­ties—the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI)—to en­hance cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion.

“The goal of this part­ner­ship is to de­vel­op a new gen­er­a­tion of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als equipped with the skills and knowl­edge need­ed to tack­le the chal­lenges of to­mor­row,” the Prime Min­is­ter said. “This in­vest­ment in our hu­man cap­i­tal will both strength­en our de­fences and em­pow­er our youth, thus cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for them in the bur­geon­ing field of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty whilst as­sur­ing the SOC's [Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre’s] long-term ef­fec­tive­ness.”

PM Row­ley al­so not­ed that Over­watch’s ser­vices are de­signed to be ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able.  He said for mi­cro, small, and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) would be able to utilise its ser­vices.

“This in­clu­siv­i­ty will cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for even the small­est busi­ness­es in our re­gion to pro­tect them­selves against cy­ber threats, and so fos­ter a se­cure and re­silient dig­i­tal econ­o­my,” he said.