Securing Pakistan’s Digital Future: From Commitment to Resilience

September 15, 2026 (MLN): Pakistan’s digital transformation has reached a stage where cybersecurity can no longer be treated merely as an IT matter. Banking, telecommunications, energy, health care, industries. government services and everyday communication increasingly depend on connected systems.

This creates enormous opportunity, but also a national dependency that must be protected.

Pakistan has made genuine progress. The National Cyber Security Policy 2021 provided strategic direction, while the CERT Rules 2023 established a structure for national, government, sectoral and critical-infrastructure response teams.

The National Cyber Emergency Response Team supports incident response, advisories and capacity building.

The Pakistan Information Security Framework 2026 provides a basis for consistent security controls and assurance, while the National Cyber Security Operations Centre was inaugurated in August 2026.

Pakistan’s placement in the highest “Role-modelling” tier of the International Telecommunication Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index 2024 is another important achievement. It reflects national commitment across legal, technical, organizational, capacity-building and cooperation measures.

However, this recognition does not mean every organization big or small business has achieved equal operational maturity. Pakistan’s national cybersecurity foundations are becoming stronger, but readiness remains uneven.

The real test is whether an organization can detect an attack quickly, separate a genuine incident from routine alerts, contain the threat, maintain essential operations and restore services safely.

Cybersecurity must therefore move from a compliance-led approach to a resilience-led one.

We should measure detection, containment and recovery times, successful backup restoration, third-party exposure and the closure of serious vulnerabilities not simply the number of controls installed.

Clear national governance is equally important. Several institutions have responsibilities for policy, regulation, critical infrastructure, cybercrime investigation and incident response.

These responsibilities should be translated into a publicly understood matrix. During a major cross-sector incident, there must be no uncertainty about who leads, investigates, communicates and coordinates recovery.

Critical national infrastructure requires particular attention. Banking, payments, telecommunications, energy, government platforms, healthcare, cloud services and data centres are interconnected.

Disruption in one sector may quickly affect others. Pakistan needs clearly identified critical services, independently auditable minimum controls and recurring exercises to test cross-sector dependencies.

The financial sector demonstrates both our progress and exposure. According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s January–March 2026 review, digital channels processed 92 per cent of retail-payment volume.

This supports financial inclusion but makes the security of applications, wallets, payment systems, telecom networks and third-party providers a matter of systemic importance.

Artificial intelligence further changes the threat landscape. Attackers can use AI to produce convincing phishing messages in English, Urdu and regional languages, clone voices, manipulate identities and automate reconnaissance.

Defenders can use it to correlate events, prioritise alerts, investigate incidents and identify abnormal behaviour.

However, AI cannot compensate for weak access controls, unsupported systems, missing logs or untested backups. AI-supported security decisions must remain explainable, recorded and subject to human oversight.

Pakistan’s approved National AI Policy is an important beginning. It should be supported by practical requirements covering data protection, privacy, model security, foreign cloud dependencies and accountability.

Technological sovereignty does not mean building everything locally; it means retaining control over sensitive data, critical decisions and continuity options.

People remain equally important. Pakistan needs practical capability in security operations, secure software development, cloud security, digital forensics, operational technology and AI assurance.

Universities and industry should jointly develop laboratories, internships, cyber ranges and employer-validated curricula.

Local cybersecurity companies and MSSPs can extend monitoring and incident-response capabilities to organizations unable to build large internal teams.

Pakistan also needs better national measurement. Based on publicly accessible information, consolidated statistics on material cyber incidents, financial losses, productivity losses and recovery performance are not readily available.

This does not mean agencies receive no confidential reports.

Anonymized national trends should nevertheless be published so progress and priorities can be assessed objectively.

The way forward requires an integrated, time-bound roadmap: clear accountability, harmonized incident reporting, auditable critical-infrastructure controls, trusted threat-information sharing, workforce development and regular national cyber exercises.

Success will not be measured by the number of policies issued or technologies purchased.

It will be measured by whether Pakistan can continue delivering essential services during a serious cyber incident and recover with minimum harm to citizens, institutions and the economy.

Pakistan has built important foundations. We must now convert cybersecurity commitment into measurable national resilience. 

About Author:

Jamal Nasir Khan is CEO of Supernet Technologies Limited and founder and CEO of SuperSecure.

He has more than three decades of leadership experience across Pakistan’s ICT, telecommunications and cybersecurity sectors, and contributes regularly to discussions on digital transformation, critical infrastructure and national cyber resilience.

Disclaimer:

The above analysis/article is for informational and educational purposes only.

Copyright Mettis Link News