Kuala lumpur: The establishment of the Cyber Nucleus Team by the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) is a strategic step towards strengthening the nation's defence capabilities against modern warfare threats, which are increasingly focused on the cyber, electromagnetic, information, and cognitive domains.
According to BERNAMA News Agency, the Centre for Comparative Technology Research director at the Malaysian Institute of Defence and Security (MIDAS), Col Dr Maimunah Omar, said the changing global security landscape, marked by great power competition, armed conflicts, hybrid threats, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), cyber attacks, and information warfare, requires the MAF to develop new capabilities in line with the Defence White Paper (DWP).
"The Cyber Nucleus Team is part of that journey (to develop capabilities). The challenge now is to ensure it evolves alongside people, technology, industry, and the whole of society, because in the new era of warfare, national sovereignty is not only about visible borders but also about the invisible digital space. Defending Malaysia means ensuring the country remains sovereign, functional, and resilient even when threats arrive without borders and without a single bullet being fired," she said in a statement here today.
Maimunah said cyber threats were no longer confined to conventional warfare, as peaceful nations could also become targets of cybercriminal groups, ransomware operators, hacktivists, or state-backed actors seeking to steal data, conduct espionage, cause disruption, or exert strategic pressure.
She said global statistics showed that the average number of cyber attacks on organisations increased from around 1,168 attacks per week at the end of 2022 to 1,925 per week in early 2025, while the government sector recorded an average of 2,678 attacks per week in the first quarter of last year.
Maimunah noted that developments in West Asia, including the Israel-Iran conflict, also showed that cyber operations were now being conducted alongside military operations, with internet cameras believed to have been used to support battle damage assessments and target correction. "This demonstrates that modern warfare does not necessarily begin with gunshots or missiles. It can begin with networks, data, cameras, communications, or human perception," she said.
She added that modern warfare had also expanded into cognitive warfare, involving efforts to influence how society thinks, trusts information, and makes decisions. "Disinformation, social media manipulation, and efforts to weaken trust in institutions can become part of strategic competition," she said.
Maimunah said the DWP recognised the cyber-electromagnetic domain as a new operational domain that provides critical capabilities for the MAF to conduct operations safely, while also emphasising the need to address threats from AI technology, autonomous systems, and cyber-electromagnetic operations.
She said the development of national cyber capabilities must focus on enhancing cyber resilience, adopting a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, developing human capital, collaborating with industry, utilising threat intelligence, and applying AI-based analysis so that threats can be identified before they become crises.
The MAF previously announced that it would establish the Cyber Force as its fourth branch by 2030 to address threats arising from the modern security landscape. The Cyber Nucleus Team will be officially launched by Defence Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin in conjunction with the 2026 MAF Day Carnival at the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) Base in Lumut, Perak tomorrow.