Malaysian organisations ready for generative AI, but cybersecurity laws urgently needed - CSM

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian organisations are at the forefront in terms of readiness to adopt generative artificial intelligence (AI) for their business and operation, said CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM).

CSM cybersecurity responsive services head of division Mohd Zabri Adil Talib said the current state of readiness is in line with the Malaysia Digital initiative aimed to spur the nation's digital economy.

"As for now, Malaysia is on the right track to adopt the technology, as we have launched the AI roadmap and are in the process of drafting AI regulation, which is now understood to be at a level of over 50 per cent.

"Malaysia is fortunate because the government is very supportive, and in our efforts towards being a digital economy nation, the elements of AI and automation are important," he said on the sideline of Kaspersky Cyber Security Weekend 2024 here on Monday.

Nevertheless, Zabri opined that the country is still behind in the effort to provide laws to regulate cybersecurity that are preventive as a measure to avoid any possible threat involving the use of AI.

"We need to have a preventive law in which every critical national information infrastructure organisation is required to conduct a security audit and assessment of the advantages or vulnerabilities of its systems at least once a year.

"This needs to be mandatory in every agency (which is at risk) so that we know the maturity level of cybersecurity in the organisation, and this will also include the vendors who deal with the agency," he noted.

Zabri believed the lack of such laws and regulations provides an option for organisations to not perform any cybersecurity audit on their systems, which in turn will lead to a low level of cybersecurity.

"As a cybersecurity defender or the enforcement agency, we must have the same capabilities or the competency as the threat actors in adopting the use of generative AI to help us make more informed decisions to combat the threats," he added.

As a background, generative AI refers to the use of AI to create new content, namely text, images, music, audio, and videos, and it is powered by foundation models (large AI models) which can multi-task and perform out-of-the-box tasks. - BERNAMA