Govt Building National Computer Incident Response Team Amidst Rising Cyber Threats

The government is developing a more structured national Computer Incident Response Team, a framework intended to bring banks, telecommunications providers and other digital service operators under a single coordinated cybersecurity structure.

Melford Nicholas, Minister of Information, Communication Technologies, Utilities and Energy, outlined the plan at the National Cybersecurity and Fraud Prevention Forum, describing it as a natural extension of a computer incident response team the government has already built internally.

Nicholas said the government’s existing team is responsible for penetration testing government systems, identifying weaknesses in digital infrastructure, and restoring services after any intrusion.

He said the planned national version would broaden that mandate to include the banking sector, telecommunications operators and other digital service providers.

“Any intrusion at any level could affect people across institutions,” he said, explaining why the government wants non-banking digital service providers involved as well.

The minister said cybersecurity concerns extend beyond banking to the country’s utility infrastructure.

He pointed to the electricity network’s supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, system, which coordinates the grid from a central location, and said a similar SCADA system will be installed for water distribution later this year.

“That infrastructure, if we’re not careful, could be vulnerable towards a cyber attack,” Nicholas said, adding that the Caribbean has not yet experienced such an incident but that preparation cannot wait for one.

“There’s always day one when something happens,” he said. “We have to be prepared.”

Nicholas argued that a country’s cybersecurity posture carries direct economic consequences.

“There’s such a thing as a cyber security index,” he said. “Persons would be low to do business here in this environment because they will not feel as secure as they would” if local systems failed to meet international security standards. “Cyber security is in fact national security,” he said.

Gordina Hector-Morrell, Director of Cybersecurity within the Ministry of ICT, said the government is working to strengthen the legal framework underpinning that response, including exploring accession to international cybercrime conventions that would allow Antigua and Barbuda to seek assistance when perpetrators are based abroad.

She named the Budapest Convention and the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, along with the UN Global Mechanism on the use of ICT in cyberspace, as agreements under consideration.

“Because it’s transnational, it may involve a perpetrator in another jurisdiction,” she said. “Collaborating or cooperating with other organisations globally will help us to be able to do that.”

Nicholas said the ministry already maintains relationships with computer incident response teams elsewhere in the region and beyond.

“We have relationships with other certs within the CARICOM region and within the Latin American region, and certainly within Europe and the North American experience as well,” he said, adding that those ties allow Antigua and Barbuda to pursue “collaboration from our international partners” and “some degree of discovery and restitution” when fraud originates overseas.

Hector-Morrell said building a broader culture of cybersecurity awareness within Antigua and Barbuda underpins all of the government’s technical work. “Knowledge is power,” she said.

“If persons are not aware, then they can’t act accordingly.” She said the ministry envisions the national incident response framework eventually drawing in law enforcement, financial institutions, telecommunications providers, academia and non-governmental organisations.

“Cyber security is everybody’s responsibility. Everybody’s,” she said. “All of us have a part to play.”

Nicholas said the national CERT initiative is likely to move forward once government attention shifts from hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.