00:00 Trinidad and Tobago experienced a rash of cyber attacks between the period 2019
00:06 and 2023. The national cybersecurity landscape has seen a significant
00:13 increase in cybersecurity incidents which have affected various sectors as I
00:21 indicated a moment ago. During this period there were 205 successful cyber
00:29 attacks reported to the Trinidad and Tobago cybersecurity incident response
00:36 or report team in the Ministry of National Security 52 of which happened
00:43 in 2023. He says the trend has been consistent with global increases. When
00:49 you when I as a public man make reference even the slightest reference
00:54 to another experience in another space one is condemned for saying I don't want
01:00 to hear about that now. I live in Trinidad, it's only Trinidad I want to hear about.
01:04 But of course a lot of these cyber attacks come from outside and involve
01:13 technologies from outside of Trinidad and Tobago as well. Nevertheless the
01:18 National Security Minister says government has committed significant
01:22 sums to help the private sector to protect themselves from attacks. If you
01:28 wisely and properly expend money in terms of cyber security to protect your
01:37 organization, your records, your business, the government by way of encouraging
01:42 that has made a tax exemption of 500,000 available to you. Minister Hines
01:50 referenced the recent attacks against TSTT and the National Insurance Board.
01:55 These incidents and of course a very recent vintage have contributed to the
02:01 sense of mistrust, loss of control and unease among citizens. When people
02:10 believe that their personal information can be captured by cyber criminals they
02:17 lose faith in our institutions and resist all of the good work that many
02:23 of you exert on a daily basis. The CARICOM impact sensitization workshop
02:29 has been held through collaboration and funding from the European Union. Trinidad
02:35 and Tobago was selected out of a competition of 40 countries to work with
02:39 the European Union and financing through the UN Office for Counterterrorism for a
02:43 counterterrorism technology project. I am advised by the UN colleagues that was
02:48 extremely successful that the collaboration here was top of the game.
02:53 The types of attacks prevalent in the region are ransomware, phishing and data
02:59 breaches. The losses from cybercrime in 2023 were estimated to be eight trillion
03:06 dollars globally. I didn't say billion, I didn't say million, eight trillion and
03:13 this rose from three trillion in 2021. This increase in losses is due to a
03:19 number of factors including the increasing sophistication of cyber attacks,
03:23 the growing number of connected devices and the increasing reliance on digital
03:29 technologies.
03:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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