MANILA -PLDT Inc., one of the country’s biggest telecommunications companies, has proposed the use of its secure data centers to store critical government data amid a recent string of successful cyberattacks targeting national government agencies.
The telco giant launched on Thursday the country’s first ever sovereign cloud, which is a secure and localized cloud that can be used to house critical data such as National ID records and even national defense records, said ePLDT president and CEO Victor Genuino.
“What we are selling is peace of mind,” he said during the Philippine Digital Convention 2023.
“The agency needs to feel assured that when they move their data from an on premise service, which in most cases is a server inside the office of a government agency, to an infrastructure provider like ePLDT (their data will be safe),” he added.
Genuino said they were in ongoing talks with the Department of Information and Communications Technology to identify potential government agencies that could transfer their data to the sovereign cloud.
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ePLDT, the country’s biggest data center operator, also designed its sovereign cloud in a so-called air gap mode.
“This means the cloud infrastructure is not connected to the public internet. If you go through all breaches that have happened, not only here but abroad, they were because of a public internet connection,” Genuino said.
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Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ivan Uy, a guest speaker during the technology conference, welcomed the launch of the country’s first sovereign cloud.
“Their dedication and expertise to advancing the local ICT industry make them the ideal partner to drive this initiative,” Uy said.
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The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and law enforcement agencies such as the Philippine National Police and National Bureau of Investigation have suffered major data breaches this year. The latest cyberattack victim was the Philippine Statistics Authority, although the agency said on Thursday the financial data hacked from its system was “not extensive”.