The government will set up an interim national cyber security committee to optimise the state's response to cyber threats.
The committee, to be formed by July, is needed in the absence of the cyber security draft bill which is being consideration by the National Legislative Assembly, said Pichet Durongkaveroj, the digital economy and society (DE) minister.
The committee will be chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Prajin Juntong. The Thailand Computer Emergency Response Team (ThaiCERT), which operates under the umbrella of the Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA), will provide the main workforce for the committee.
Mr Pichet said cyber security was one of the most critical issues facing the country, as cyber attacks increasingly result in frauds, scams, system hacks and terrorism.
He said the interim committee would be responsible for setting the cyber security strategy and undertake all needed measures to strengthen critical digital infrastructure of the country as well as prevent cyber threat to state agencies' websites.
However, until the cyber security draft bill is put into effect, the government must set up the cyber security committee to handle the job in line with the bill. A committee under the bill will later replace the interim committee.
Moreover, the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa), under the umbrella of DE ministry, is assigned to collaborate with the Education Ministry to create awareness of digital personal data and cyber security among Thai youth.
This campaign will target elementary and secondary school students in order to raise awareness of digital literacy. It is hard to predict future threats, so it's better to prevent them, Mr Pichet said.
He added WannaCry ransomware is a case in point, as many state enterprise computers were infected.
Previously, ETDA said the weak point of threat prevention is that several state agencies lack security awareness at management level. On the other hand, citizen use pirated software, and do not update security software.
There were 4,000 cyber attacks in the country last year, up 10% from 2015.
ETDA established the ThaiCERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) unit in 2015 to offer Government Monitoring Systems to state agencies. Nevertheless, cyber attacks have risen due to increases in online activities and growing loopholes in state agencies' websites.
ETDA plans to invest 700 million in 2017 (up from 400 million in 2016) to strengthen the reliability of government websites.