KUALA LUMPUR: The National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA) is in the process of drafting a new Cybercrime Bill which is set to be tabled during the Third Meeting of the Fourth Session of the 15th Parliament, this Oct.
NACSA chief executive officer Dr. Megat Zuhairy Megat Tajuddin said the proposed bill aims to replace the Computer Crimes Act 1997, which is now considered outdated and less relevant in addressing modern cyber threats.
“A few weeks ago the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim expressed his support towards the drafting of the new bill in a Facebook post after chairing the second National Cyber Security Committee meeting for 2024.
“We actually wanted to revise the Computer Crimes Act 1997 but I think it is more relevant if have a new act rather than revising the old Act, which is more complicated,” he told Bernama after participating in a Dialogue session titled ‘Regulating for Resilience: Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection’ at the International Regulatory Conference (IRC) 2025, here yesterday.
Megat Zuhairy added that the new bill is a key requirement for Malaysia to join the Budapest Convention and the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime this June, both of which are essential to demonstrate the country’s commitment to combat cybercrime domestically and internationally.
In a separate dialogue session at the conference, Megat Zuhairy called for urgent action to address the critical shortage of cyber security professionals, highlighting the Prime Minister’s target of achieving 25,000 cybersecurity experts by the end of the year.
He stressed the importance of retaining local talents to meet this ambitious goal.
“The industry should offer higher salaries to Malaysian talents and not let them go to Singapore or Dubai so that they will stay in Malaysia. With a shortage of talents, we are jeopardising the national security in a broader perspective.
“We need 10,000 talents this year and if the universities manage to produce 3,000 now, half of it will go to other countries like Singapore, Qatar and Dubai who offer a lot more (salary). It depends on conventional ways of getting supplies and we have to take very drastic approach in getting more talents,” he said.
Beside that he also advocated for workplace flexibility to encourage more women to enter and remain in the cybersecurity workforce.
The fruitful dialogue session which was moderated by the chief technical and monitoring officer of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Che Juhan Che Mat was also joined by chief of Strategic Planning and Membership cum Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Sulyna Abdullah and the chief operating officer of Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) Nasution Mohamed.
The two-day conference hosted MCMC is bringing together industry leaders, policy makers and global experts from Asean, Australia, United States, Saudi Arabia to hold discussions to strike balance between innovation and consumer protection while fostering trust and global cooperation. – BERNAMA
