KARACHI: The cyber security wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and NED University of Engineering and Technology have decided to work together to meet the challenges of cyber safety, officials said on Sunday.

The decision was taken on Saturday during a visit of FIA Director General (DG) Dr Sanaullah Abbasi to the cyber security centre of the NED university.

University officials informed him about security, protocol, challenges and problems related to be faced in future in the cyber world. They also briefed him on different projects being undertaken by the varsity administration, including different domains of the NED varsity’s laboratory related to endpoint security, internal security, and forensic and quantum technology.

“During the meeting, matters pertaining to monitoring of social media platforms also came under deliberations,” according to a spokesperson.

The FIA’s cyber security wing and NED varsity vowed to continue their cooperation and learn lessons from each other’s experience, according to a press release.

The FIA DG was accompanied by Sind zone-1 director Amir Farooqi, Sindh zone-II director Younis Chandio and cybercrime circle additional director Imran Riaz.

FIA receives 158,000 complaints

Talking to Dawn, Mr Abbasi said the FIA’s cyber security wing had received total 158,000 complaints in the country from 2019 to June 2021. Those complaints were about fraud, pornography and defamation/hate speech, he added.

According to him, so far around 30-35 accused have been punished in those crimes this year.

He also admitted that in view of manifold increase in complaints pertaining to cybercrime, the FIA was facing significant resource deficit to bring the culprits to justice.

He said they had established five laboratories in the country so far and were considering setting up 12 more such facilities to address the issues of cybercrimes.

Recently seven universities in the country, including NED, NUST, Bahria etc., had established ‘cyber security centres’ with financial assistance of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), he said.

Those centres of high excellence would likely to establish ‘indigenous softwares’ to launch ‘cyber patrol’, he added.

Explaining, the FIA chief said that with help of those ‘indigenous tools’ to be generated by those centres, the agency would compile data/record of suspects involved in cyber terrorism, hate speech, electronic fraud, sexual exploitation and cyber stalking on the pattern of police’s data/record of criminals.

The FIA chief said their cybercrime wing had undertaken a series of reforms to meet growing challenges of the cyber security.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2021