Amid a series of cyberattacks against government agencies, Japan agreed to help the Philippines boost its cyber security capability under the Official Security Assistance (OSA), Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief said on Thursday.

During the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) forum Thursday, AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. said General Yoshihide Yoshida, chief of staff of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force agreed to help the military enhance its capability in cyber security.

"I told General Yoshida, he is my friend... I told him that (if will ) help us in cyber security, and he said yes," said Brawner.

Brawner confirmed that cyber security is among the capabilities that they have requested from Japan under the OSA.

"We're looking at possibly more radar, aircraft, ships, and also we're trying to develop cybersecurity capability. Perhaps we can also get some help from the Japanese government," he said.

As part of its effort to improve its capability against cyber attacks, Brawner noted that the AFP intends to expand its cyber security unit into a cyber command.

"That would include more capabilities, more personnel of course and more equipment. This will allow us to defend our networks better in terms of cyber security. We will try to recruit more IT personnel, especially the young people who want to serve their country and join the AFP, again we are opening up our doors to these individuals who are highly skilled in terms of cyber," he said.

"We are relaxing some of the requirements for instance the physical and medical aspect of the requirement procedures,'' he said.

Based from interacting with his counterparts worldwide, Brawner said ''there is that general realization that this new breed of warriors do not necessarily have to be muscled, strong. What we need are individuals who are intelligent, very skillful in the cyber domain."

Brawner said the cyber command will only be tasked to secure the networks of the entire Armed Forces and not the whole country.

"The cyber command will not have that physical territory, but it will have the whole archipelago, the whole Philippines as its territory because it will try to defend the cyber networks of the AFP. I would like to emphasize that the cyber command will protect the networks of the AFP and not the entire country," he explained.

"We have islands, pockets of cyber security units, for instance the Army depending the Army network, in the Air Force and in the Navy as well as the other smaller units like the area command what we need is to integrate all of these efforts because when a cyber attack happens, it does not just focus on one unit but it's in the entire network that we would like to protect," he added. Robina Asido/DMS