PETALING JAYA: Sustainable funding, skilled personnel and secure infrastructure are needed to ensure cybercrime prevention initiatives under Budget 2027 deliver lasting protection, say cybersecurity experts.
Cybersecurity expert Murugason R. Thangaratnam said the government must look beyond the initial rollout of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and prioritise long-term investment.
“Annual budgets fund launches well, but threats evolve continuously. The real test is whether capability is funded beyond the launch year,” he said.
Rather than agencies set up separate systems, he suggests the government invest in a secure common national AI platform for the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC), police and regulatory agencies.
“Rather than each agency building in isolation, the government should invest in a trusted national platform, including secure cloud infrastructure and a common data-sharing layer, that the NSRC, police and regulators can all use.
“Sensitive workloads should sit in sovereign or tightly governed environments. Shared infrastructure avoids duplication and makes ongoing costs predictable,” he said.
He also stressed the need to recruit and retain data scientists, threat analysts, digital forensic specialists and AI engineers, while providing continuous training for frontline investigators.
“Without this, even the best system sits underused,” he said.
Criminologist Datuk Dr P. Sundramoorthy said the initiatives marked an important shift towards proactive, intelligence-led crime prevention rather than responding only after crimes had occurred.
He said strengthening Bukit Aman’s Sexual, Women and Children Crime Investigation Division and the Malaysia Internet Crime Against Children (Micac) system was crucial, as child sexual exploitation networks could operate across borders.
Sundramoorthy said the proposed NSRC app could also help prevent financial losses by allowing users to verify suspicious information before making transactions.
However, he cautioned that technology alone was insufficient.
“Users must also understand that a clean result does not guarantee that a transaction is safe,” he said.
He said success should be measured by reductions in victimisation and the disruption of criminal networks, rather than merely the number of cases detected.
On Friday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced under Budget 2027 that Bukit Aman’s Sexual, Women and Children Crime Investigation Division would strengthen Micac’s analytical capabilities to identify perpetrators and child exploitation networks earlier.
Anwar also said the NSRC would develop an AI-powered app to help the public check suspicious phone numbers, bank accounts and links before making transactions.
