To enable this, digital minister Gobind Singh Deo said, amendments to the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 would be tabled in Parliament next March or in the middle of next year.

Speaking after the signing of a cooperation agreement between Digital Nasional Bhd and CyberSecurity Malaysia to enhance the cybersecurity of Malaysia’s 5G network here today, he said new technologies were becoming increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence.

“The government is aware that the most important aspect for the success of this industry is strengthening data centres.

“That’s why it has focussed on bringing big investments from Google, Microsoft, ByteDance and so forth,” he said.

Gobind said Malaysia only has a data committee and a commissioner.

“What I want to focus on first is developing this committee.

“Moving forward, we will propose to the government that this committee be turned into a data commission,” he said.