President Marcos has ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) to boost its anti-cybercrime prevention, detection, and investigation efforts, given the current sophisticated criminal activities taking place online.

Marcos said this as he led his first command conference with the PNP at Camp Crame in Quezon City on Thursday, Feb. 15.

In his remarks, the President said the PNP must beef up its anti-cybercrime efforts after noting that the number of cybercrime cases jumped to 21,300 in 2023 from 13,890 in 2022.

He added that the high number of cybercrime cases indicates how technology has evolved and how the police have to keep up to prevent this trend from continuing.

“We have to build our cybercrime unit from scratch," Marcos stressed.

"We need experts to do this. Magaling ang Pinoy sa IT (Filipinos are good at information technology), we seem to have a talent for it,” he added.

Records from the PNP from July 1, 2022, to January 31, 2024, show that online scams topped the list of cybercrime cases at 15,937. Illegal access came second at 4,821, followed by computer-related identity theft cases at 2,384.

The PNP has proposed to establish a Cybersecurity Center that should be responsible for monitoring, detecting, protecting, mitigating, and responding to cybersecurity issues and incidents.

Meanwhile, President Marcos reminded the PNP to ensure that their proposed amendments to the PNP’s Reform and Reorganization Bill pending in Congress will be included in the final version.

PNP Chief P/Gen. Benjamin Acorda assured the President that they are in close coordination with lawmakers for the said amendments.

“They are now giving me [the] opportunity to review the Senate version before the bicam. And they are asking me to write a letter to include all the provisions that we wanted rectified from this Senate version of the reorg bill,” Acorda said.