Recent Audio Leaks Forces Government to Rethink Cyber security

A meeting between the National Security Committee and all important Government and Military Officials was held at the Prime Minister’s House. It has been decided that a high-powered committee headed by Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah will investigate the audio leaks

The federal government after the infamous audio leaks incident have decided to rethink their cybersecurity framework and are now working towards creating a new cybersecurity policy while also improving the quality of cybersecurity being provided to the government.

This decision was made in a meeting between Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and the National Security Committee, alongside the two parties many other people such as federal ministers, services chiefs, and civil and military officials participated in the meeting.

Called upon to discuss the recent audio leaks, their causes and their prevention, the meeting surely was an important one since the audio leaks have been haunting both government and military officials for days now. These audio files contain sensitive conversations such as the one between PM Shahbaz Sharif and Party Vice President Maryam Nawaz where the two are actively discussing the destruction of a former government project.

Being destructive in nature, these audios’ have forced the officials to take urgent steps. In the meeting, government officials and the national security committee decided to take some bold steps. According to the briefing, a high-powered committee led by Rana Sanaullah will be set up to investigate the cause behind these leaked audios.

Apart from investigating the incident, the government is also taking necessary steps to prevent these incidents in the future. The government in the meeting has ordered the Ministry of Law and Justice to prepare a new legal framework related to cyber security. The new framework designed by the Ministry of Law will be built in accordance with the National Cyber Security Policy 2021.

Approved by the federal cabinet in July 2021, the Cyber Security Policy has many positive objectives some of which are the establishment of governance and institutional framework and a cyber-secure ecosystem and the security enhancement of the national information system and infrastructure.

Other important factors of the Cyber Security Policy include information sharing mechanism at all tiers, protection of National Critical Information, the integrity of ICT products and protection, the online privacy of the citizens, standardization of Digital and Network Forensics processes, risk management regulations, R&D programs, and global cooperation.

Consisting of many critical objectives, once developed, the newer framework will be a significant improvement over the old one and will allow the government to avoid devastating data leaks such as this one.