SECURITY, be it national, financial, Internet or personal, has become one of the hottest topics discussed and a top investment priority this year by the industry. This is partly attributed to the increased adoption of digital technology and high dependency on the Internet for business transactions and communications.

Based on a study by IT services company Unisys, Malaysia ranked third in terms of security concerns among the 14 countries surveyed globally.

The study, which surveyed about 1,000 respondents around the country, also revealed that the No. 1 concern of Malaysians centred on identity theft, with 78 per cent of the respondents either extremely or very concerned about this issue. Financial fraud came in second at 74 per cent while health epidemic was third at 72 per cent.

What this study shows is that even though many security initiatives have been put in place, the public still think that more needs to be done. This also signals that businesses and Government organisations need to do more in terms of implementing security systems.

Looking at this growing security concern, maybe it’s time that we make full use of the already available security tool that all Malaysians have – the MyKad.

Although it has been over five years since its introduction, this smart identification card is still under-utilised in terms of features. For example, the card’s ability to capture fingerprint and photo image and its public key infrastructure for e-commerce transactions have not been fully adopted yet.

The fingerprint and digital photo image are biometric features that, if leveraged fully, can be an effective security system while conducting transactions at the banks, identity checks at the airport, etc.

The card is good for identification purposes since it can store a fingerprint and picture. So, cases such as identity theft could be eliminated.

Based on security industry experts, the MyKad’s security feature can be integrated with a company’s back-end system but unfortunately, not many are taking advantage of it.

It must be noted that Malaysia is the first country in Asia, if not the world, to adopt such a hi-tech identity card system. It would certainly be a waste if the technology is only used as a regular identity card.