Secuna, the Philippines' community-powered cybersecurity testing platform, is urging the local government and companies to rethink their cyber defense strategies as cyber attacks are seen to further increase amid the shortage of cybersecurity talents in the country.

A recent skills gap report found that most organizations in the Philippines find it difficult to hire cybersecurity talents due to a skills shortage, which results in more severe cyber attacks.

According to its CEO and Co-Founder AJ Dumanhug, only a few companies are prioritizing cybersecurity because of regulations and certifications, and some of them already lack an in-house cybersecurity workforce to assist them in strengthening their security posture. The skill shortage will more likely lead to oversights in processes, threats in the network, and lesser time to conduct proper risk assessment and management.

“Cybersecurity is a responsibility, not just a list of regulations and compliances to check off in order to claim that they are secure and compliant. The corporate sector and government have to review their assets for any security gaps and take measures to eliminate known vulnerabilities before cybercriminals could exploit them,” Dumanhug said.

“The first line of defense is awareness. With the rising threat of cybercrime activities, it is most important that we reconsider and create new strategies to recognize vulnerabilities and their warning signs to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals,” he added.

Secuna has been helping startups, enterprises, and the government by connecting them to the most advanced and highly-vetted cybersecurity professionals to simulate cyber attacks and find security flaws that real-world malicious hackers can exploit and leverage to gain access to their IT systems, while also continuously ensuring compliance with security and functional safety standards.

The cybersecurity firm also has recently announced the renewal of its certification from the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) as a Recognized Cybersecurity Assessment Provider for Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) in the country.

With the DICT certification, Secuna has revolutionized the vulnerability assessment and penetration testing model to enable organizations to improve vulnerability management and remediation processes, better understand and reduce risk, manage the evolving attack surface, and leverage automation to enable manual pentesting to find business-critical vulnerabilities that tools alone cannot uncover.

Dumanhug said that apart from various cybersecurity platforms, we also already have sufficient human resources in terms of cybersecurity experts with a contextual understanding of challenges faced here and who possess the right knowledge and background.

“Secuna's platform-driven, human delivered approach to offensive cybersecurity provides an opportunity for organizations to think strategically about their proactive security efforts and tap into this pool of ethical hackers who can help solve the impact brought about by the scarcity of in-house cybersecurity talents,” he noted.