Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Toure, your excellencies, fellow ministers, distinguished delegates, honorable guests, ladies and gentlemen, a pleasant good afternoon to you all.

I am deeply honored to speak on behalf of the Republic of the Philippines during this High Level Segment Meeting of the 2008 ITU Council to share with you the Philippines’ perspective to an important ITU global agenda: a framework for global cooperation towards an international roadmap for cyber security.

The Philippines is one with the global community in recognizing the growing threat of cybercrime in our increasingly technological society. Our infrastructures and societal processes are now heavily dependent on ICT and are therefore vulnerable to cyber security threats such as spamming, identity theft, hacking, malware and viruses, denial-of-service attacks, child pornography and cyber prostitution. We also acknowledge that cyber security provisions in existing laws are quickly outdated by advancing technology and development of new services. Cybercrime is indeed a persistent and growing threat, and we are one with the ITU in recognizing the need to address this collectively. I would like to highlight three areas that are of particular importance to the Philippine government when it comes to cyber security.

First is the Philippines’ large and growing mobile subscriber base. The Philippines is widely considered the text messaging capital of the world with a mobile subscriber base of 60 million that sends approximately 1 billion text messages per day.

Advances in technology have also enabled mobile commerce, or m-commerce, which allows mobile subscribers to buy and sell goods and services or remit money across borders through wireless handheld devices. Prepaid subscribers, which constitute the majority of our mobile subscribers, are also able to transfer prepaid credits from one mobile phone to another, creating yet another payment mechanism. Given the increasing number of transactions being facilitated by mobile phones, it has become of paramount importance to secure our communications infrastructure to protect consumers and facilitate the prosecution of cyber criminals.

Second is the Philippines’ rapidly growing business process outsourcing, or BPO, industry, which includes call centers, back office support, animation, medical and legal transcription, software development, engineering design and game development. This industry has already created 350,000 jobs to date and generated close to $5 billion US dollars in export revenue in 2007. The Philippines is now considered a leading BPO destination, having been named “Offshoring Destination of the Year” by the National Outsourcing Association of the UK last year.

The importance of this high growth industry to the Philippine economy, especially during the current global economic slowdown, makes it crucial for us to protect our ICT infrastructure from various forms of cyber attacks. One major requirement of BPO customers is business continuity, so any downtime caused by cyber attacks will be very detrimental to BPO operators. In addition, BPO operators deal with highly sensitive corporate, medical and legal data on a daily basis, so the protection of such data and the infrastructure on which they are transmitted is of utmost importance.

Third is the protection of our women and children in the online environment. While on-line fraud, denial of service attacks and other crimes result in millions or even billions of dollars of damage, the damage caused by child pornography and cyber prostitution to innocent women and children far exceeds any monetary amount. The Philippines has a specific law that institutes policies to eliminate the trafficking of persons, particularly women and children, as well as general penal laws. While these existing laws have assisted us in prosecuting criminals, they have become increasingly inadequate for threats that have grown in frequency and sophistication.

To address these concerns, we are focusing our efforts in implementing our National Cyber Security Plan, which was launched in 2005 by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology with support from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In general, our National Cyber Security Plan mandates the institutionalization of the necessary capabilities in the government and in the private sector to adequately respond to cyber security threats.

Another part of our efforts to strengthen our country’s cyber security is the enactment of a cybercrime law. In 2000, the Philippines enacted a landmark e-commerce law that provides for the legal recognition of electronic messages, documents and signatures, as well as defines some types of cybercrime such as hacking and copyright infringement. However, with the increasing sophistication and creativity of cybercriminals, this law is quickly becoming inadequate for the prosecution of cybercrimes.

I am proud to share that we have made significant strides in improving our cybercrime legislation over the past year. In October 2007, an International Conference on Cybercrime was held in Manila, where we invited the Council of Europe to provide feedback on our draft legislation. We have since incorporated the feedback from the conference into our anti-cybercrime bill, which is now under review by our legislators in Congress. We have also been formally invited by the Council of Europe to accede to the Convention on Cybercrime pending the passage of our cybercrime legislation.

One of the key provisions of the anti-cybercrime bill is the creation of a National Cyber Security Office, whose task is to formulate and implement our National Cyber Security Plan. Some of its functions include the preparation and implementation of appropriate measures to prevent and suppress cybercrime offenses; the monitoring of investigations of cybercrime cases; the facilitation of international cooperation on cybercrime prevention, suppression and prosecution; and the coordination of the support and participation of the business sector, local government units and non-government organizations in cybercrime prevention programs. As a transitory measure to the establishment of the National Cyber Security Office, we have designated a National Cyber Security Coordinator to specifically handle concerns related to cyber security.

The bill also specifies how the Philippines will cooperate with other countries with regard to suppression and prosecution of cybercrimes. Given the increasingly borderless nature of cybercrimes, international cooperation has now become an integral component of any cyber security strategy. The Philippines believes that it is only by aligning our legislative frameworks and enhancing the exchange of technical and legal knowledge that we have a chance of battling cybercrime.

The threefold challenge for the Philippines, as may be the case in many other countries, is for the government, the private sector and other partners, to (a) reinforce current policy and operational measures to reduce vulnerability in cyberspace; (b) nurture a culture of cyber security amongst users and critical sectors; and (c) strengthen self-reliance in terms of information security technologies and human resources.

The Philippines commends and fully recognizes the initiative taken by ITU, under the leadership of Secretary General Toure, to raise awareness on cyber security and steer member states to address this global problem collectively. We also congratulate our ASEAN neighbor Malaysia, who has offered its state-of-the-art facility in Cyberjaya as the venue to operationalize the ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda. We are confident that with the joint efforts of the ITU’s 191 members states and more than 700 sector members and associates, we will be able to achieve a consensus for a framework of international cooperation to ensure a safe, secure, and trustworthy online environment for all.

Thank you and mabuhay!