EDITORIAL: The National Cyber Emergency Response Team’s latest advisory should be treated not as routine guidance but as an alarm bell. It confirms what many have warned for years: the digitisation of Pakistan’s economy, state services, and financial systems has far outpaced the investment in securing them.
Personally Identifiable Information — CNICs, health records, financial data — has been repeatedly exposed. Each breach erodes trust and amplifies the risk of exploitation, both by criminals and by hostile actors.
The advisory calls on organisations to classify data, encrypt it in storage and transit, enforce strict access controls, and adopt secure development practices. Individuals have been told to guard their CNICs, enable multi-factor authentication, and avoid unsafe applications. These are sound measures, but the fact that such elementary precautions still need to be spelled out in 2025 underlines the depth of the problem. The 2021 Cyber Security Policy already declared citizen data protection a matter of national security.
Yet weak controls, outdated systems, and poor cyber hygiene continue to define practice in both public and private sectors.
The governance failure lies in the gap between policy and enforcement. Advisories and circulars are issued, but breaches involving millions of records are reported with alarming regularity, and rarely is accountability fixed.
The absence of an empowered, independent data protection authority with the ability to investigate, penalise, and enforce standards has left citizens unprotected. Meanwhile, institutions tasked with safeguarding digital infrastructure are under-resourced, fragmented, and reactive rather than preventive.
The private sector is equally culpable. Banks, telecom companies, healthcare providers, and e-commerce platforms handle vast amounts of sensitive data. Yet investment in cyber defences is often treated as a discretionary expense rather than a core operational requirement.
The CERT advisory makes clear that negligence carries real consequences: financial fraud, operational disruption, reputational damage, and potential regulatory action under laws such as PECA. That message must now be enforced through mandatory audits and penalties, not left to voluntary compliance.
The larger risk is strategic. Data protection is not only a matter of individual privacy but of economic competitiveness and national security. A digital economy cannot function without trust. If citizens fear that their CNICs, bank accounts, or medical histories will inevitably be compromised, adoption of digital platforms will slow, and investment will hesitate.
Hostile entities exploiting weak systems pose an even graver threat, with implications for financial stability and even critical infrastructure.
That is why digitisation must be accompanied by equivalent investment in protection. Zero-trust models, end-to-end encryption, breach-response protocols, and resilient disaster recovery are not luxuries; they are the basic architecture of a secure digital ecosystem. Building this requires resources, trained professionals, and clear regulatory frameworks. It also requires a cultural shift: security must be seen not as a compliance checkbox but as a strategic necessity.
The CERT has done its part by issuing the warning. The responsibility now lies with policymakers, regulators, and corporate leaders to respond decisively. Pakistan cannot afford another cycle of breach, outrage, and forgetfulness. Every entity handling citizen data must be audited and held accountable. Every system must be hardened. And every violation must carry consequences. Without this, the promise of a digital economy will be overshadowed by fear and mistrust.
The choice is clear. Either the state and private sector invest in protecting citizen data, or the costs of neglect will continue to accumulate in the form of fraud, exploitation, and eroded confidence. The latest advisory should not become another piece of paper filed away. It should be the point at which Pakistan finally treats data protection as inseparable from digitisation itself.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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