Category: Science

Incomplete legal corridors, high investment costs, time-consuming data synchronization and a lack of qualified personnel have made it hard for Vietnamese banks to embrace blockchain technology.

Representatives of banks shared this information at a seminar on October 26.

Blockchain has become a pillar for technology in Vietnam with multiple interesting apps in different sectors such as letter of credit, performance and payment guarantee in banking, origin-tracing in agriculture, diploma management application in training sector.

Therefore, blockchain is gradually understood as technology, rather than bitcoin or digital currency as many were mistaken.

Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) is one of the banks applying blockchain in trade finance, becoming the first Vietnamese bank to successfully apply blockchain in issuing letter of credit to an out-of-system advising bank. MB, VPBank and Vietcombank have also announced their blockchain application in financial transaction.

According to Nguyen Quoc Hung, general secretary of the Vietnam Banks Association, blockchain development in Vietnam is seeing multiple challenges as there are few experts in this sector, apart from limited awareness of this technology among residents and a lack of infrastructure.

One of the hurdles banks face when applying blockchain technology is the high research and infrastructure investment cost. Furthermore, they need to spend time integrating and synchronizing with other systems and infrastructure, said a representative of Vietcombank.

Commercial banks are currently applying blockchain technology on a trial basis as Vietnam is yet to have a complete legal framework for banking products and services to protect the interests of the transaction-related parties and reduce risks and disputes arising during operation.

Vu Cong Hung, a representative of the Information Technology Department under the State Bank of Vietnam, shared the same opinion, adding that high broadband and storage costs, low processing capacity, security risks and a lack of statutory regulations and qualified personnel are currently the challenges plaguing the application of blockchain.

Though the government has issued documents orienting and inducing the application of blockchain, a completely legal basis is still needed to develop this technology and drive the blockchain technology market appropriately.

 

 

Source: Ministry

 

Traditional security measures using software can now no longer stop cyber-attacks and phishing, which are increasing and more serious. Internet users are, therefore, warned to upgrade their general knowledge on these dangerous activities to better protect themselves.

Cyber-attacks at present do not merely aim at individuals but at businesses to steal sensitive information. In the first 6 months of 2022, functional agencies in Vietnam detected over 2 million such attacks to domestic websites, not to mention 300,000 discovered software pieces to steal account passwords of small and medium enterprises.

Director of Nam Truong Son Security Co. said that online threats are created from vulnerabilities on the side of end-users, developers, and website service operators.

Along with cyber-attacks are phishing activities. The Anti-Phishing System from Kaspersky was able to detect and stop more than 12 million harmful links in Southeast Asia so far. A half of cyber-attacks in the first quarter of 2022 aims at users in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

The most obvious negative consequence of online phishing is a repetition of dangerous messages sent to smart phone users related to their personal information and bank accounts.

Experts have warned that to fight against online scams, Internet users need to raise their awareness about the matter such as their ability to recognize phishing emails.

Protection software should be installed on each personal computer as well as email servers. Organizations and businesses are advised by VNCERT/CC to be well-prepared to respond to cyber-attacks by a combination of different methods, including frequent knowledge update on cyber security.

Other useful measures have been implemented by major organizations. At the beginning of this October, Vietinbank sent warning SMS to its customers about fraud messages using its name.

Several banks followed this lead to carry out similar actions to help the public raise their awareness about sophisticated and unexpected criminal activities.

Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center (VNCERT/CC under the Authority of Information Security – the Information and Communications Ministry) informed that it regularly updates fake domain names of famous banks like ACB, SCB, TPBank, VietinBank, VPBank, MSB on its websites as a way to aid bank users in this fight.

 

 

Source: Ministry

 

 Vietnam takes the lead and set to post a 31% growth in gross merchandise value (GMV) from 23 billion USD in 2022 to 49 billion USD in 2025, according to the “e-Conomy SEA 2022” report released by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company on October 27. The report said South East Asia’s top digital economies grew faster than expected in 2022 and is set to reach 200 billion USD in total value of transactions made this year.

The six major economies covered in the report, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, will achieve the milestone of 200 billion USD by 2025 which is three years earlier than schedule.

The 2022 GMV rose by about 20% from 161 billion USD in 2021. “After years of acceleration, digital adoption growth is normalising,” said the report.

Southeast Asia continues to see growth in the number of internet users, with 20 million new users added in 2022, raising the total number of users to 460 million.

However, that growth is starting to slow, and was just 4% in 2022 compared to a year ago. That’s compared to a 10% year-on-year increase in 2021 and 11% growth in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Southeast Asia’s online economy is still on track to reach 1 trillion USD by 2030 as online shopping becomes the norm, according to the report.

“E-commerce continues to accelerate, food delivery and online media are returning to pre-pandemic growth levels, while travel and transport recovery to pre-COVID levels will take time,” the report said.

Another growth driver, digital financial services, which includes payments, remittances, lending, investments and insurance, have seen healthy growth from 2021 to 2022, thanks to offline-to-online behavior shifts post-pandemic, wrote the report.

Among these services, insurance recorded the highest, growing 31% year-on-year while lending grew 25% year-on-year.

All the six countries are set to post double-digit growth in GMV from 2022 to 2025. Overall, their Internet economy is predicted to reach 330 billion USD by 2025 if companies put a greater focus on profitability for the next three years.

 

 

Source: Ministry

 

  Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) had six subjects listed in the World University Rankings (WUR) by Subject 2023 by the Times Higher Education (THE), two subjects higher than the previous ranking. According to VNU, the subjects include Business and Economics, Life Sciences, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences.

THE WUR by Subjects ranked 11 subjects of universities based on three data sources: results of surveys independently conducted by THE, the scientific publication database on the Scopus system under the publisher Elsevier, and data provided by the higher education institutions.

The ranking results were evaluated based on five groups of criteria including: Teaching, Research, Citation, Industry Income and International Outlook.

VNU has increasingly shown its position in multi-disciplinary training by being recognized for only two subjects in 2020 to six in 2023.

Six Vietnamese universities have been listed in the THE Rankings for 2023, which includes nearly 1,800 universities across 104 countries and regions, the largest and most diverse of its kind to date. VNU was placed between 1001st and 1200th.

 

Source: VOV5

The 45 winners of the Vietnam Science and Technology Innovation Awards 2021 were announced in Hanoi on Tuesday. From 110 works submitted, 45 were selected. Many are already in use, improving productivity and quality, lowering costs and reducing dependence on imports.

Two of the winners were equipment for defusing mines and mobile explosives by Lieutenant Colonel To Duc Tho and concrete hopper technology applied to reinforcing soft ground by engineer Pham Thanh Cong and associates.

“This is the 27^th time the Vietnam Science and Technology Innovation Awards has been held. Many awards winners have improved Vietnam’s productivity or national security. Priority is given to projects that have a practical application. Creativity is also taken into account, but the jury pays much more attention to each project’s usefulness,” said Dr. Le Xuan Thao, Standing Vice President of the Vifotec Foundation, which organizes the awards.

The award ceremony of will take place Thursday night at the Hanoi Opera House.

 

 

Source: VOV5

 

 

The draft, comprised of eight chapters and 58 articles, has been drawn up in line with the nine policies specified in the governmental Resolution… Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung on Tuesday presented a legal draft to the National Assembly (NA) to amend the Law on Electronic Transactions.

The draft, comprising of eight chapters and 58 articles, has been drawn up in line with the nine policies specified in the governmental Resolution 152.

The draft expands the scope of the Law to include e-signatures, e-certificates, and the conversion between paper-based documentation and data messages.

It also legally recognises electronic transactions and adds new cybersecurity and data security regulations to the Law.

“The introduction of e-certificates will act as a catalyst for the widespread use of electronic transactions in all sectors across the board”, he said.

In response to the draft, the Chairman of NA’s Science, Technology and Environment Committee, Le Quang Huy, said his committee concurred largely with the draft.

He said the draft worked consistently with free trade agreements of which Viet Nam is a member. However, it had not fully covered the notion of ‘data message’ specified by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in 1996.

For that reason, he called for a revision to the draft to ensure its compatibility with international agreements.

He also agreed with expanding the legal scope but was concerned that the draft’s scope might not be exhaustive. He called for a revision to Article 2 to ensure no potential subjects would fall out of the scope.

Regarding Articles 10 and 11, he asked for further clarification on the definition of ‘electronic document’ and the validity of data messages to ensure the articles accord with the Law on Notarisation.

He underscored Article 14, which requires an identity between paper-based documentation and their correspondent data messages, as a legal burden for commercial banks because the banks, in most cases, are not issuers neither holders of the documentation.

Article 14 also stipulates that data messages must be signed with e-signatures if their correspondent paper-based documentation has been signed manually.

The chairman believed such a stipulation would be impractical as it was not easy for banks to request additional e-signatures from their clients once they had signed their documentation manually.

Under Article 14, the conversion between paper-based documentation and data messages requires the signatures and seals of the converting organisations to be considered valid. The chairman said such a requirement was unnecessary and would add time to the process.

The conversion from data messages into paper-based documentation is restricted to bank clients rather than banks themselves. He called for banks to be eligible for the conversion similarly to their clients.

 

 

Source: Ministry

 

 Lac Hong University in Dong Nai province on Wednesday received the Certificate of Accreditation for six training programs from the Southeast Asian University Network (AUN-QA).

The six training programs are Information Technology, Electronic Engineering Technology, Pharmacy, Business Administration, Accounting, and English Language. Accredited training programs are valid for a period of five years from 2022.

Lac Hong University has 10 faculties teaching 20 majors in economics, technology, and languages with BA, MA, and PHD degrees.

 

 

Source: VOV5