Cyber defence: Public, private entities told to set up ‘SOCs’ in 6 months

KARACHI: Pakistan’s national cyber defence agency - National Cyber Emergency Response Team (PKCERT), has directed all public and private sector organisations across Pakistan to establish fully operational cyber Security Operation Centres (SOCs) within the next six months, in a major move aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defence and ensuring continuous monitoring of evolving digital threats.

Speaking at a forum titled “Fortinet Security Day Karachi 2026-Securing the AI Journey”, on Wednesday, PKCERT Director General Dr. Haider Abbas said rapid adoption of information technology has significantly increased the risk of cyberattacks, data breaches, and information theft, making proactive cybersecurity measures essential to safeguard critical systems and data.

He said Pakistan witnessed 927 cyberattacks in 2024 and 2025 combined, with 253 attacks already reported so far this year (2026), highlighting the growing cybersecurity threat. However, he said, these attacks were successfully handled and countered.

He said a government entity had come under a cyberattack last week, resulted in encrypted its data. The government entity was hit by a ransomware attack, one of the most severe forms of cyberattacks, which encrypted its data. The organization had to restore its systems and recover the data from backup servers, he added.

Amid this, all the public and private sector organizations have been given a six months deadline to establish their cybersecurity operation centres and make them operational as well, he added.

“We have given six months to all the organizations in Pakistan, even the private organizations to deploy their cyber security operation centres (SOC) within their organizations and continuously monitor their threat landscape,” DG PKCERT said.

Pakistan has also developed the Pakistan Information Security Framework 2026 (PISF 2026), which establishes compliance requirements and auditing controls to strengthen information security standards across organizations. This is currently under review by the Cabinet and has been presented to the parliament. “Soon it will be approved and this will be the first cyber information security standard to be deployed in Pakistan including all centres,” he said.

Pakistan has also deployed a national CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), which is responsible for preventing, detecting, and responding to cyberattacks. It does national level intelligence and “we are collaborating with friendly countries CERTs around the world and share threat intelligence around the world.”

State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and all the banks, Securities and Exchange Companies of Pakistan (SECP), National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA), Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA), Higher Education Commission (HEC), Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan (CAA) - they are in the process of deploying their sectoral CERTs at their organizations. At the next step, we are going to establish a federal government CERT also at national CERT, he added.

In recognition of its efforts, Pakistan has become a member of Asia Pacific CERT earlier in 2026 and became a member of the First last month, Abbas informed.

State Bank of Pakistan ITD Director Ahmed Saeed said Pakistan’s banking sector is increasingly adopting hybrid cloud infrastructure to support artificial intelligence (AI), as building on-premises AI infrastructure requires significant investment. However, integrating public and private clouds increases security risk, reduces security visibility, and raises data privacy and regulatory compliance challenges.

Banks must comply with the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) cloud and cybersecurity frameworks and implement zero trust architecture, centralized identity and access management, cloud-native security monitoring integrated with on-premises systems, and consistent security policies across both environments, he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026