I had the honour of working with Secretary Eduardo Ermita, a far reaching leader in the Philippines with an extraordinary vision. He was the 22nd Secretary of National Defense of the Philippines (October 3, 2003 – August 23, 2004) and 35th Executive Secretary of the Philippines (August 23, 2004 – February 23, 2010).

Together with Cecilia Sanchez, the CEO of Leverage International, we curated PROTECT, the public-private sector partnership to build the security ecosystem in the Philippines.

As the private sector owned and operated over 80% of the infrastructure in the Philippines, he understood the paramount importance of government sharing intelligence with the private sector.

After building trust, PROTECT engaged and empowered the private sector. I thank the Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, for introducing me to Cecilia Sanchez in 2005, and we built the collaborative platform between the public and private sectors to exchange threat intelligence and best practices. After realising the value of working together, Secretary Ermita instructed the Philppines security and intelligence community to actively engage with the private sector and participate in PROTECT.

To built the partnership between government, academia, community and the private sector, Secretary Emita and I addressed PROTECT, a tradition that has continued to this date.

May his soul rest in peace!

Rohan Gunaratna