President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the strengthening and improvement of the cybersecurity systems of the Philippine National Police (PNP) through further training of its personnel and investing in technologies that will help address the increasing cybercrime and emerging issues on cybersecurity.

In a Palace briefing on Wednesday, PNP chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. said that while there is improvement in crime statistics, there is still a need for PNP to focus on addressing cybercrimes.

“Although seemingly nakita natin na nag-improve ‘yung crime statistics?it went down by 10 percent?but as we dissected further this crime statistics, there is a need for us to focus on cybercrimes,” he said.

Based on the National Peace and Order Situation report presented by Acorda to the President, the total number of crimes reported between July 1, 2022, and January 31, 2024, or the peace and order indicator, crimes committed dropped by 10.66 percent as compared to the period December 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022.

Acorda said as of 2023, the PNP has trained a total of 487 police offers on cybersecurity. Acorda said they will be complying with the directive of the President by further expanding the access of their training down to every police stations using their 2024 budget.

“Yung ang nakita natin na medyo tumaas as reported during the last quarter. And in line with that, as instructed by President, we are intensifying, we are capacitating our police officers in the ground, especially previously ang ating cybercrime groups is only up to the regional level lang,” he said.

“This time, we are training our personnel and our objective is down to the police station level, municipal level, we will have police officers who are trained to handle to cybercrime or online crimes,” he explained.

According to Acorda, most cybercrimes that were reported to the PNP were committed locally, with swindling or estafa as the leading cybercrime reported. This was followed by the illegal online access, identity theft, online libel, and credit card fraud, respectively.

The PNP chief also stressed the need to reinforce public awareness on cybercrimes.

“Dissecting it further ‘yung mga cybercrimes committed, it’s more on online scams. To our appreciation, it’s more of awareness for our mga kababayan or the public about this skimming na ginagawa ng mga kriminal over the internet,” he said.

Acorda acknowledged the role of the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) Registration Act in establishing the identities of perpetrators.

“Malaking bagay po talaga when it comes to the identity, or establishing the identities of these perpetrators sa online. Through the SIM card identification, medyo nati-trace natin, nakakatulong sa pagtrace natin sa mga identities ng mga scammers,” Acorda stressed. Presidential News Desk