October 16, 2025 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Center (CICC) is seeking a P1-billion budget to procure an all-in-one tool to scan the dark web and scrub social media for potential risks to national security.
CICC has received support from lawmakers to increase its budget by almost P200 million to hire more personnel for its threat monitoring efforts through Hotline 1326.
This places the CICC’s proposed budget for 2026 close to P658 million, with P458 million allocated under the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted to Congress.
However, CICC deputy executive director Renato Paraiso said the agency is still hoping to have congressional support for a last hike of P1 billion. The amount will be used to acquire a detection tool that the CICC can rely on to scan both the surface and underworld of the web.
The tool can scrub social media platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram to find potential threats and resolve them before they can even harm anyone. Paraiso said most risks right now emanate from social media – from fraud attempts to manipulated videos.
Further, Paraiso said the tool can also monitor the dark web where bad actors — from data thieves to terrorist financiers — often transact.
Cybersecurity giant Norton said the dark web is the “home to the internet’s hidden sites, services and products — some innocent, while others downright dangerous.”
Moreover, Norton said the dark web is a place where cybercriminals communicate anonymously, bypass censorship, access restricted information and pass around files securely.
For Paraiso, the CICC has to be equipped with the capacity to dive into the dark web to prevent threat actors from compromising national security. He said cybercrimes are always evolving, and the CICC will be a step ahead if it has the tool to track the dark web.
Apart from this, the tool will fill in the personnel shortage hounding the CICC. He said the tool would automate the scanning of all layers of the internet, from surface web to the dark web.
Based on the staffing summary listed on the NEP, the CICC is allowed to employ up to 79 people in its plantilla, but currently only 52 of those are filled.
Recently, the CICC has found itself busy combatting online threats, especially on Sept. 21 during the twin anti-corruption protests in Luneta and EDSA organized by various sectors.
On that day, the CICC responded to a coordinated attack on the websites of government agencies that are, notably, entangled in the flood control mess.
The attacks targeted the Department of Public Works and Highways, which implements the flood control projects, and the Department of Budget and Management, which issues funding for such infrastructure. Other state agencies were also attacked.
The CICC was quick to act on retrieving the websites of the agencies. The websites were defaced for less than a minute, but ended at that, with the CICC intervening in the attacks.
According to IBM Security’s 2025 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, Asia and the Pacific saw a 13-percent rise in cyberattacks in 2024, leading all regions in the world.
The Philippines was among the most attacked countries, tied with Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea at second, next to Japan.
Banks supervised by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas also recorded a two-percent jump in losses arising from cyberattacks, amounting to P5.82 billion in 2024.
