PETALING JAYA: Various parties are calling for greater clarity over the procurement and use of MySejahtera, given the fears of abuse of personal data collected by the app.

       Founder and chief executive officer of cybersecurity firm, LGMS, Fong Choong Fook, said as there is concern over many privacy-related details, he suggests the government do a “security audit” to check whether controls are in place to protect the data and the platform itself.

       “The first question I will ask is: is the data resting on cloud servers encrypted or not, regardless of where the servers are?

       “This is a fundamental concept of data protection,” he said, adding that the government should also lay out how the data could be used and the retention period.

       Fong said the government should also be the sole stakeholder of MySejahtera, which should not be sold to a private party as it “concerns a lot of private information on Malaysians and visitors”.

       MCA publicity bureau deputy chairman Wong Siew Mun said there must be transparency in the procurement process to allay people’s doubts.

       She suggests that the public be regularly updated to avoid rumour-mongering against the government.

       Wong noted that Khairy had given an assurance that the data in MySejahtera would belong to the government.

       “The data,” she added, “is protected by the National Cyber ？？Security Agency (Nacsa), the National Security Council (NSC), and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu).”

       Academy of Sciences Malaysia IT and Computer Science Discipline chairman, Prof Datuk Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin, also voiced concerns of data abuse as the Industry 4.0 era leverages on big data analytics and deep learning.

       “Personally, I will feel safer if my data is with the government,” he said.