While Bangladesh's increased focus on digital services has clearly resulted in the democratization of the internet, one key aspect that seems to evade us is digital security.
In the context of our nation, a weak cyber security framework is as unacceptable as a house with no doors -- unfortunately, lacklustre governmental policy and widespread corruption within our public institutions has led to the status quo.
Which is indeed a troubling prospect, given the increasing numbers of digital services which carry out financial transactions and house a lot of sensitive information pertaining to users. Not to mention that there will always be bad actors who seek to use technology for nefarious purposes -- to that end, money-laundering has been one specific issue that has persisted within our borders.
Lest we forget, incredibly lax digital security measures are what ultimately led to the Bangladesh Bank heist, which saw close to $1 billion dollars being siphoned off of our foreign reserve back in 2016.
The government's Digital Bangladesh manifesto has made a lot of headway in bringing our nation up to speed with the rest of the world, now is the time that our digital security also followed suit. Our financial sector has already reaped a lot of rewards through the proliferation of numerous mobile financial services and online banking opportunities to go with an increased usage of plastic cards and less reliance on cash.
However, all of the progress made will be moot if none of us feel safe and comfortable in using these digital services.
Digital Bangladesh may be here, but security is not yet a given.