Minister Urges Preventive Cyber Culture to Safeguard State Infrastructure

Emphasizing that national security requires a fundamental shift from reactive countermeasures to a sustainable, preventive cybersecurity culture, Minister for Posts, Telecommunications, Information Technology, and Science & Technology Faqir Mahbub Anam addressed an international conclave on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. The two-day seminar was inaugurated at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka under European Union funding.

The high-level policy dialogue, titled ‘Cybersecurity for Resilient Digital Government: Strategic Awareness for Policy-Makers, Senior Civil Servants, and Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) Leaders’, was organized under the ‘E-ffective Governance: Accelerating e-government and digital public services in Bangladesh’ initiative.

Addressing the assembly as chief guest, the Minister observed that under the forward-looking leadership of Prime Minister Trique Rahman, Bangladesh is rapidly expanding its digital frontiers. With modern digital banking, mobile financial services (MFS), and the foundational ‘One Citizen, One Identity, One Wallet’ architecture relying extensively on cloud ecosystems, institutional exposure to sophisticated cyber vulnerabilities has multiplied alongside economic opportunities.

In response, the Minister outlined three strategic imperatives to anchor national resilience: Security by Design, Citizen Data Assurance, and Budgetary and Institutional Leadership. He asserted that cybersecurity must be embedded directly into the baseline engineering of all Critical Information Infrastructures (CII) from inception rather than being treated as a secondary patch. Additionally, he emphasized enforcing a robust data protection framework to secure personal records, while systematically integrating cybersecurity capacity building into annual revenue budgets and executive planning. Drawing upon international best practices, he urged the National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA) to formulate an execution roadmap modeled on Estonia's digital governance framework.

Speaking at the session, Advisor to the Prime Minister Rehan Asif Asad affirmed that safeguarding digital sovereignty is just as critical for a modern state as territorial integrity. He noted that the weaponization of artificial intelligence has magnified cyber hazards, requiring the state to develop indigenous technological talent and deploy advanced defense mechanisms.

Chaired by ICT Division Secretary Md. Mamunur Rashid Bhuiyan, the inaugural event featured welcome remarks by Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) Executive Director Nahid Sultana Mallik. Introductory remarks were delivered by Ingrid Toonikurg, representative of Estonia’s e-Governance Academy (eGA), alongside delegates from the European Union. The technical sessions convene local and foreign specialists focusing on CERT/CSIRT networking, cyber diplomacy, and infrastructure defense.

//DBTech/MZIPR/SME//