Pakistan launches data exchange layer to boost cyber security this year

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's government, in collaboration with the World Bank, is working to boost the country's digital economy. As part of this effort, it plans to launch the Pakistan stack and sectoral stacks this year to further strengthen the cyber security and protect the nation and its economy from data breaches, and other cyber threats.

Besides, the government is working to transport government departments data on cloud soon, Federal Minister for IT and Telecom, Shaza Fatima Khawaja said while speaking at the 8th international conference titled 'Cyber Threat Intelligence 2025' in Islamabad on Thursday.

"We have a digital economy enhancement program running with the World Bank (WB) that the ministry of IT leads with the help of our departments and our partners like NADRA [National Database and Registration Authority] and BoI [Board of Investment], which has a very strong component of cyber security especially when we talk about securing authentic identification," she said.

"The idea is that the national data exchange layer that we are building and launching this year to launch the Pakistan stack and further moving to the sectoral stacks."

She maintained that all of these have to be made bullet-prove in terms of cyber security. So issuing national identity is one thing that ensuring the secure authentications - the ID - along with protecting the international data exchange layer that will be launched is going to be absolutely critical for the digital transformation moving forward, she added at the conference organized by Total Communications.

Besides, Pakistan's cloud first policy is also there right now. "We are looking to transport the whole government date on cloud and that also gives you along with issuing digital identity, creating the data exchange layer. Digitizing the government data...is kind of opportunity to secure all of this data that is going to be online," she added.

Pakistan is also working with the education ministry on ensuring that the curriculums are upto the mark and producing the right kind of human capital resources that are required to protect the nation in these emerging challenges and changing landscape, she said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025