When reported cyber incidents climb year after year, most governments brace for bad news.
But for the Dominican Republic’s Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Centre (CNCS), Carlos Leonardo, this trend signals progress.
“It is important to distinguish between the number of incidents reported and the actual level of risk,” says Leonardo, who also serves as Director of the National Cryptographic Institute, as part of the National Directorate of Intelligence (DNI).
As reporting channels become easier to use and organisations become more willing to turn to national authorities, more incidents come to light.
That, Leonardo argues, is “often a positive indicator of visibility and institutional maturity,” rather than evidence of a worsening threat environment.
The distinction shapes how the CNCS measures itself.
Instead of relying on raw incident counts, the agency tracks detection capability, response times, containment effectiveness and recovery performance, which are indicators that give a truer picture of national readiness, says Leonardo.
While preventing every attack is impossible, what’s achievable are rapid detection, response and maintaining continuity of operations, he notes.
It is a pragmatic stance from a leader who helped build the country’s cyber architecture from the ground up, from crafting the first National Cybersecurity Strategy in 2018 to creating the national incident response team (CSIRT-RD), and now driving the National Cybersecurity Strategy 2030 that guides CNCS’ work.
Building from scratch
Cybersecurity in the Dominican Republic went through a process of institutionalisation over the past decade.
The first National Cybersecurity Strategy was developed in 2018, guiding the country to prepare for its digital future while protecting citizens, institutions, and critical services.
Consultations with government agencies, the private sector, academia, and international partners then helped produce the country’s first cybersecurity governance framework, which established the CNCS, the National Cybersecurity Council, and the CSIRT-RD.
Now, the CNCS stands as the national authority responsible for coordinating and promoting cybersecurity policies, capabilities, and initiatives across the country.
The need for a national response team was clear because “cyber incidents were often handled in isolation, which limited visibility and delated response efforts,” he explains.
The CSIRT-RD was designed to centralise coordination, share threat intelligence, and provide technical help for institutions during attacks.
The incident response team works alongside a Security Operations Centre (SOC) to continuously monitor and enhance the country’s ability to identify and respond to threats in real-time.
Through the CNCS and the national incident response team, the organisation also provides visibility management, awareness programmes, capacity building, and strategic coordination to address cyberthreats affecting public institutions and critical sectors, explains Leonardo.
While the threat landscape has changed dramatically since 2018, the original principles still hold: strong governance, critical infrastructure protection, cyber talent, public awareness, and collaboration, he adds.
He notes that the National Cybersecurity Strategy 2030 keeps that vision while expanding capabilities to meet modern threats.
AI and what’s next for cyber defence
These modern threats are growing, warns Leonardo.
Over the next year, the CNCS expects more ransomware, business email compromises, supply chain attacks, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced cybercrime – targeting operational technology and cloud environments.
But as threats modernise, defensive postures can strengthen as well in what he calls “intelligent augmentation”.
AI can aid defence teams by speeding up threat detection, prioritising vulnerabilities, and taking over repetitive tasks, while the team ensures that human oversight stays central to critical decisions, he says.
“The objective is not to replace analysts, but to empower them,” he notes.
He also warns that overly strict security can lock people out of the very services it’s meant to protect.
In his view, controls should be proportionate to risk rather than imposed as blanket restrictions across the network.
“Defensive AI becomes truly effective when it combines threat intelligence, contextual awareness, automation, and human expertise.
“The winning strategy in the AI arms race is not necessarily to reach faster than adversaries, but to become more resilient, more informed, and more adaptive than they are,” he says.
Protecting people
Leonardo emphasises that cybersecurity is more than technical infrastructure.
The CNCS recognises that digital safety must include effective mechanisms to protect individuals from online exploitation and technology-enabled abuse, he explains.
This is reflected by CNCS’s move to join StopNCII.org, a platform that helps victims of non-consensual intimate imagery. The Dominican Republic is the first Latin American country to do so.
The platform allows victims to take proactive action without uploading the images themselves.
Digital fingerprints, known as “hashes”, are shared with participating platforms to detect and block redistribution while preserving victims’ privacy.
“For us, this initiative reflects a broader principle: cybersecurity is ultimately about protecting people.
“As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in our daily lives, cyber resilience must include measures that safeguard citizens from harms that affect their rights, wellbeing, and confidence in the digital space,” shares Leonardo.
The adoption of StopNCII.org followed a process of close collaboration between national stakeholders and international partners to ensure that the platform could be integrated effectively within the country’s broader initiatives, he explains.
Cybersecurity as a continuous process
“Cybersecurity is not a destination; it is a continuous process of adaptation and improvement.”
AI, cloud computing and interconnected infrastructure will keep reshaping risks and opportunities, for which partnerships among government, industry, academia, civil society, and international allies will be essential for success, he says.
The progress that the country has done to strengthen the national cybersecurity posture is far from over.
Moving forward, the agency continues to focus on strengthening resilience, protecting critical services, investing in cybersecurity talents, and fostering international cooperation.
The north star is to create a resilient and collaborative cybersecurity ecosystem that supports the country’s digital transformation, says Leonardo.
“We will ensure that trust remains at the centre of the Dominican Republic’s digital future.
“Cybersecurity is no longer only about technology; it is about enabling sustainable economic growth, safeguarding national security, and protecting the rights and opportunities of our citizens in the digital age,” Leonardo affirms.
