Jamaica Cybersecurity Standards Framework Completed

The Jamaica Cybersecurity Standards Framework, aligned with the internationally recognised NIST framework, is now complete.

Minister Without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister responsible for Science, Technology and Special Projects, Dr. the Hon. Andrew Wheatley, disclosed this during his contribution to the 2026/27 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday (June 2).

Dr. Wheatley also informed that the National Cyber Incident Response Plan has been tested and is ready, and that US$10 million through the Strengthening Cybersecurity in Jamaica Project – backed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – has been approved and will be deployed through 2029.

The Minister cautioned that Jamaica is currently under active and escalating cyberattack.

“In 2025 alone, there were more than 49 million cyberattack attempts on Jamaica, up from 12 million in 2022. Critical government systems and institutions have been targeted and breached. A data breach on a major government digital platform exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans,” Dr. Wheatley said.

“These are not warnings… these are results. A 2020 assessment of Jamaica’s national cybersecurity maturity rated us at just 40 per cent of the maximum score, against the regional leader’s 70 per cent. The gap is real, it is structural, and it must be closed,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Minister advised that Jamaica’s National Cybersecurity Strategy 2021 to 2025 will expire this year.

He noted that this represents the second iteration of a national strategy that began in 2015, and that it has served Jamaica well.

“It gave us our five strategic goals – Protect, Deter, Build, Partner, Govern – that have guided our national cybersecurity architecture through a period of significant growth and equally significant threat; it gave us the frameworks, the standards, and the incident playbook. The progress it enabled is real, but strategy must evolve. The threat landscape of 2025 is not the landscape of 2021,” Dr. Wheatley stated.

“Artificial intelligence is now being weaponised by attackers. Supply chain compromise has become the primary concern of large organisations globally.

Critical information infrastructure protection has moved from aspiration to operational necessity, and Hurricane Melissa reminded us that cybersecurity and physical resilience are not separate disciplines – they are one,” he added.

Dr. Wheatley reaffirmed that Jamaica is committed to entering its third national cybersecurity strategy cycle – one built on stronger foundations, clearer governance, and guided by a permanent National Cybersecurity Directorate at the helm.

“The 2026 strategy will give us the institutional permanence, the legislative teeth, and the operational scale that the previous two strategies pointed towards. Jamaica will not simply refresh a document. Jamaica will build the next generation of its national cybersecurity posture,” he stated.