Cyber Security Matters Even in the 2016 Elections

A defaced COMELEC website welcomed visitors last Easter Sunday. Beware of Anonymous Philippines!!

The 2016 national and local elections in the Philippines may just be the most technologically-influential event in our history today due to the recent hacking and leaking incidents that happened within the online resources of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) which began last Easter Sunday.



On that day, a group of hackers collectively known as Anonymous Philippines suddently defaced the home page of the COMELEC website and replaced with a statement prompting the poll body to activate the security features of the thousands of PCOS machines that will be used in the coming elections. But what happened a few days later may just be more serious than we thought as another group of hackers named LulzSec Pilipinas managed to hack the poll body's online servers, including the database of more than 55 million registered voters.

COMELEC may have assured the public that these recent incidents will not affect its preparations for the upcoming elections as things go back to normal, but cyber security expert Trend Micro insists that not everyone is safe from what could be the consequences of what is considered to be the biggest government-related data breach in history considering that that it has exposed personal details and fingerprint data of not only what I've mentioned in this article, but also the 1.3 million Filipino overseas voters as well.

If you are a registered voter and ready to vote for who you want to lead the country for the next six years, you have to be extra vigilant. Who knows they might use you for their online crime, so careful on your way to the polling precincts and be active in social media after voting.