THERE has been no official word on the extent to which Pakistan was affected by the massive, global cyber-attack earlier this month. However, it has emerged that the Punjab Land Records Authority, with a database of over 55m holdings, was hacked one week after the initial outbreak — after the spread of the virus had already been halted to a large extent by the swift actions of governments and companies. The scale and frequency of cyber-attacks on databases have intensified in recent years, compromising the most private, sensitive information — including biometric data, which cannot be changed like a password — of millions of individuals across the world. Given how easily it could have been avoided or at least mitigated with updated systems and anti-virus software, the attack on PLRA does not inspire confidence in how our government is addressing this emergent threat.

In this age of increasing connectivity, when just one corrupted system can impact an entire network, instead of a concerted effort to improve cyber literacy at every level there appears to be an ad hoc policy of leaving everyone to fend for themselves. While several state institutions are purportedly implementing new safeguards, it seems there are no across-the-board measures in the public sector, or directives to the private sector, or awareness campaigns. Perhaps the closest this government has come to addressing data protection — how data is collected, used and secured — is in a recommendation to develop legislation to that effect in the IT ministry’s Digital Pakistan Policy 2017. With over 30m internet users in the country, e-commerce and e-governance is rapidly expanding — a trend that has the potential to revolutionise the economy, optimise the efficiency and distribution of public services, and improve development indicators overall. But the stability of this growth remains threatened so long as the state is more preoccupied with the arbitrary surveillance of social media activity than the truly critical national security issue of safeguarding its citizens’ personal data.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017