With increasing use of technology, Vietnam is facing risks in terms of cybersecurity, threatening national security, said Nguyen Minh Chinh, Director General of the Cyber Security and High-tech Crime Prevention Department under the Ministry of Public Security.

Representatives from the Cyber Security and High-tech Crime Prevention Department
and Microsoft Vietnam at the signing ceremony of the GSP agreement in Hanoi

He was speaking at the signing ceremony of the Government Security Programme (GSP) agreement with Microsoft Corporation in Hanoi on December 19.

“The cooperation between Microsoft and the department through GSP, will actively support network security protection and cybercrime prevention.”

Under the agreement, the department will officially become a member of Microsoft’s GSP. The programme is now present in 45 nations around the world.

As a member of GSP, the department will have access to cyber threats and vulnerability information and a communication channel with Microsoft security and response teams; source code for Microsoft products, such as the popular Windows operating system and Office suites; technical data about Microsoft’s products and cloud services and opportunities to access Microsoft engineers to address specific topics.

The mission of the GSP is to build trust through transparency by providing visibility in technology, which governments and international organisations can use to help protect themselves and their citizens, said Pham The Truong, General Director of Microsoft Vietnam at the event.

“The department will gain unprecedented awareness of the malware infection landscape in Vietnam, allowing them to take timely action against threats and raise public awareness for future protection against these threats,” said Truong.

Also at the event, Truong said: “We are proud to be partnering with the Ministry of Public Security in the efforts to foster trust and transparency about Microsoft products and services and to foster collaboration between Microsoft security teams and government cybersecurity experts.”

At the event, the department also agreed to co-operate with Microsoft in developing training programmes for network security experts.

A report from the ministry showed about 4,000 websites with Vietnamese domain names were attacked and hundreds of thousands of computers were infected with malware in 2019.