| dc.description.abstract | The 21st Century is the century of Hitech
and is no stranger to cyberattacks. Even Sri
Lanka has undergone many cyberattacks in the
past which have also raised national security
concerns. Whilst Sri Lanka has enacted
legislation to deal with computer crimes such as
the Computer Crime Act No. 24 of 2007,
Evidence (special provisions) Act No 1995,
Electronic Transactions Act No. 19 of 2006,
Payment Devices Frauds Act No 30 of 2006, and
the Intellectual Property Rights Act No. 36 of
2003, there are no enacted cybersecurity laws.
In fact, the two Bills, namely the Cyber Security
Bill and the Defence Cyber Commands Act have
still not been passed even though it was
proposed in 2018. Consequently, only Section 06
of the Computer Crime Act No. 24 of 2007
mentions computer crime offences committed
against national security. Thereby, the research
problem of this article is to examine whether the
current cyber laws in Sri Lanka are sufficient to
adequately protect the country’s national
security in cyberspace. The research objectives
of this research are to examine whether the
current cyber laws protect the national security
in Sri Lanka (1), to evaluate the implementation
process in the criminal justice system in terms of
cyber laws (2) and to gain some perspectives on
how other countries such as the United Kingdom
and the United States of America have
formulated legislation to protect their country’s
national security in the cyberspace. This
research is an internet-based desk-based
research and concludes that the existing
legislation is insufficient to adequately protect
the national security in Sri Lanka and that it is
imperative to enact the two draft cybersecurity
Bills at the earliest. | en_US |
