The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said they will investigate if any sensitive information has been leaked in the recruitment of Chinese firms of Filipino troops as analysts.

In a “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon” briefing, AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla said it was a “national security concern” so are coordinating with various government agencies.

She said that they received reports that the social media page that was recruiting soldiers was taken down.

“A few days ago, we have been checking the veracity of the reports whether we have active personnel and even retired personnel that applied to this social media page. Apparently, the site was already taken down. As of the moment, it’s gone but we have been able to secure screenshots of those who have tried to apply online,” Padilla said.

“We have been checking in coordination with other agencies what the source of these accounts are and if there are really personnel that can divulge any information or if any information was leaked in terms of the military,” she added.

Padilla said most people who expressed interest in applying identified themselves as retired military personnel and one was a civilian working with the AFP.

“We will look into how deep this is. If there was any data that was leaked, we will see what repercussions the data they have been giving would have. And we will be looking at, of course, their policies and regulations and where they fall under,” she said.

Padilla said the Chinese firms could be after the internal information of the AFP.

“Any attack in the cyber domain can be of course monetary or data-driven. So what they want of course is small bits of information…they say data is the new currency, data is the new oil so that’s really what they’re into?any information that they can make sense of. So that’s their target and of course that is also what we are trying to prevent,” Padilla said.

Padilla also warned troops that they should be careful when dealing with outsiders trying to access military data.

“When it comes to these cases, we remind them always to be wary of these things. On our side, we will make sure that information about these things that are going on are properly disseminated on how they are trying to get access to the data from the military side,” Padilla said.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) earlier warned that there are firms pretending to be US or European-based that are attempting to recruit retired and active troops into part-time jobs. Jaspearl Tan/DMS