World Standards Day: IT standardization in Pakistan, Anjum Parveen, Deputy Director (IT & ICT) Standardization Wing, PSQCA

Digital Pakistan vision aims at rapid adoption of digitization, enhanced connectivity and improvement of digital infrastructure by building a digital economic system. Information security is an important paradigm of digital transformation. World over, innovative way to bypass security frontiers are targeting critical information assets to gain access to classified information of critical government sectors.

This is the first time in the history of Pakistan that IT Security standards, named Pakistan Security Standards (PSS), have been developed to ensure that mandatory security and technical requirements are met by Cryptographic and IT Security Products and Services. The purpose of these standards is to promote the use of validated Cryptographic and IT Security products and Services and to provide security in such procurements. The IT areas to be covered include Information Security, Cryptography, Computer Security, IT Security, Network Security, and Application Security. Cryptographic techniques ensure protection by ensuring confidentiality, integrity availability of such information systems. PSS (Pakistan Security Standards) defines specific cryptographic requirements for adoption in development as well as procedures for systematic evaluation of such cryptographic and IT Security products.

Adoption of PSS by public sectors is recommended to be mandatory. Government sectors, Critical Information Infrastructures and Public Service Sectors while deploying information security products are required to ensure evaluation as PSS benchmarks to identify any intentional or unintentional vulnerabilities, bugs, backdoors, logic bombs. implementation level anomalies etc. Whereas, adoption by private sector is voluntary, however, in the wake of recent rise in ransom ware, industrial sabotage and data theft incidents, gradual adoption of PSS compliance is recommended for industrial, economic and financial security impacts of such sectors on our national security.

These PSS (Pakistan Security Standards) were approved in 2021 by PSQCA, and with the issuance of the gazette notification by the Government of Pakistan, we are now set to implement them across various sectors in both the public and private domains.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024