Organisations and enterprises need to take proactive steps to protect their information from security risks as the number of cyber-attacks is on the rise, according to the Vietnam Information Security Association.

Increased investment and more human resources for information security is needed, said Trinh Ngoc Minh, deputy head of the association's southern branch.

Many enterprises have decreased their investment and training budget for information security due to the economic downturn, Minh said at the sixth Vietnam Information Security Day that opened in Ho Chi Minh City on November 14.

The event attracted more than 500 officials of State agencies, experts and enterprises in information security.

State-of-the-art information-security technologies, solutions and applications were discussed during the event.

A survey conducted by the association in October showed that half of polled enterprises had set aside no more than 5 percent of their total budget for data security.

Sixty-two percent of organisations had no qualified officials in information security, according to the survey which polled nearly 300 enterprises in the southern region.

More than half of the enterprises had no office or department of information security. Nearly 70 percent of respondents said they were not ready for outsourcing information security.

Nguyen Minh Duc, deputy director of Bkav's internet security division, said at a recent conference in Hanoi that spyware had been targeting Vietnamese state agency websites for the past year, but the country did not have enough cyber-security experts to cope with the attacks.

In Vietnam, 2,045 agency and business websites were hacked this year, but the number of cyber security experts was too small to cope with all of them.

At a conference organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications at the beginning of 2012, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan asked the ministry to train cyber security staff.-VNA