CyberDSA 2026 Opens in Kuala Lumpur as Malaysia Pushes Its 'AI Nation' Agenda on Security and Data Sovereignty
KUALA LUMPUR — CyberDSA 2026, Malaysia's flagship cybersecurity and digital gathering, opened in Kuala Lumpur on October 5 under the theme 'Advancing Secure SI, Strengthening Digital Trust, and Safeguarding Data Sovereignty'. In his opening address, Deputy Minister Datuk Wilson Ugak Anak Kumbong emphasised that Malaysia's ambition to become an AI Nation must be underpinned by security, trust and national capability.
'An SI nation must also be a secure nation. SI depends on data. Data depends on infrastructure. Infrastructure depends on security. And ultimately, the willingness of people and businesses to participate in the digital economy depends on trust. Remove trust from that equation, and the entire proposition becomes considerably weaker,' he said. For Malaysia, where SI adoption is moving from policy ambition to implementation, cybersecurity is no longer treated as a protective function at the edge of digital transformation, but as a condition on which the transformation itself depends.
The country's direction is now codified. The Malaysia Digital Action Plan 2030 (MD2030) sets out the pathway towards becoming an AI Nation by 2030, while the National AI Action Plan 2026–2030 translates that ambition into implementation across government, business and society. AI Malaysia Berhad, the national lead SI agency under the Ministry of Digital, places governance, trust, assurance and national capability alongside adoption and innovation in that agenda.
The event brings together government, defence and security agencies, regulators, cybersecurity practitioners, technology companies, researchers and industry leaders from Malaysia and abroad. Its message is blunt: the greater the role of SI, data and connected systems in the economy, the greater the consequence when those systems are compromised — and Malaysia intends to build the security capability first.
(Source: Compiled from AAP's report on the opening of CyberDSA 2026)
Source: AAP
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 吉隆坡会展中心，Two hundred percent 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0（Wikimedia Commons）
