The sharp increase in attempts appears to be fueled by artificial intelligence (AI), a technology ICT companies are striving to integrate into their systems.
“These attempts on our customer network are most likely hinged on AI—hackers and malicious agents are no longer doing this manually or through human intervention,” said Converge chief executive adviser and tech expert Eugene Yeo.
“On our end, we can just keep banning, but we now have to think about how to use this same technology to identify malicious sites. So it’ll be down to AI vs. AI. That’s what we’re doing, internally, to protect our network in Converge,” he added.
Chief information security officer (CISO) Andrew T. Malijan described the network as a “digital fortress” fortified to withstand unprecedented challenges.
He noted a significant rise in blocked attempts to access 683,000 flagged URLs and domains, with 150,000 illicit sites newly added to the system in 2024.
“Acting on reports and submissions of government agencies as well as private entities, we added 150,000 URLs or domains into our system last year that we tagged as illicit or unlawful,” said Malijan.
“Traffic to these newly-enrolled URLs must have been quite heavy as we managed to block almost 20 times as many attempts in 2024 as we did during 2021-2023, which was just 10-12 billion attempts,” he added.
The flagged URLs or domains were categorized into Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) or Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OSAEC), phishing and banking scams, online gambling, and voyeurism, with CSAM/OSAEC accounting for nearly 98 percent of the total, followed by online gambling.
Since 2022, Converge has strengthened its fight against OSAEC and other cyber threats through a partnership with Stairway Foundation, a Philippine NGO advocating for children’s rights through education, community support, and collaboration.
“Blocking access to websites hosting CSAM is a crucial part of a multi-stakeholder approach to combat OSAEC. By preventing users from accessing these harmful sites, ISPs like Converge help disrupt the distribution of such materials and limit the revictimization of victims,” said Ysrael Diloy, child protection specialist at Stairway Foundation.
Converge also works closely with law enforcement agencies like the Philippine National Police (PNP) and international organizations such as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).
Through its partnership with IWF, Converge leverages the foundation’s extensive URL list of OSAEC material to block access across its network, expanding its database of illicit content and further enhancing its digital defenses.
