10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake

New Democratic Front· National List· 23 October 2025 ·Oral question: Urgent Question: Digital Infrastructure Outage (Standing Order 27(2))

Public FinanceSecurity & Defence
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Ravi Karunanayake questioned the adequacy of the response time to the ASYCUDA-related disruption, warning that a cyberattack could have more serious consequences across the 21 interconnected institutions. He urged the Government to ensure robust onshore and offshore backups, citing risks to the targeted US$20 billion digital economy and noting reported annual cybercrime costs of up to US$1 billion.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Minister, even one hour is too long; this took a week. If it had been a cyberattack, would you be satisfied? Also, when ASYCUDA interconnects 21 institutions, if one key node is down, interconnections fail and losses cannot be properly computed. Please ensure robust onshore/offshore backups; one breach could jeopardize the US$20 billion digital economy target. Moreover, cybercrime reportedly costs up to US$1 billion annually—about 5% of export revenue—so ultra-precautionary action is essential.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Thursday, 23 October 2025 ·No. 22641 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 23 October 2025. No. 22641. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/7902