Peer-reviewed article
Online Child Safety: The Myth and Reality of Cybersecurity Laws in Malaysia
Mazlina Mohamad Mangsor, Mazlifah Mansoor, Noraiza Abdul Rahman ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper examines Malaysia's new cybersecurity and online safety laws enacted in 2024-2025 to understand how well they protect children from harmful content and digital exploitation. The author compares Malaysia's legal framework with similar legislation in Australia and the United Kingdom. The study concludes that Malaysia's laws lack some important protections that exist in other countries, such as a dedicated regulatory authority and child-specific risk assessments.
Key points
- Malaysia enacted five new or amended digital laws in 2024-2025: Cyber Security Act 2024, Online Safety Act 2025, Communications and Multimedia Amendment Act 2025, Penal Code Amendment 2025, and Personal Data Protection Amendment Act 2024
- The laws aim to protect children from harmful content and digital exploitation
- Malaysia's framework differs from Australian and UK legislation in key areas
- Malaysia lacks an integrated regulatory authority for online child safety enforcement
- Malaysia should adopt child-specific risk assessments and stringent content take-down rules similar to Australia and the UK
Limitations
This is a legal analysis document rather than an empirical study, so it cannot measure the actual effectiveness of these laws in protecting children or provide data on outcomes. It does not present evidence about whether gaps in Malaysia's legislation lead to worse child safety outcomes in practice.
Abstract
The accelerated growth of online engineering has amplified both possibilities and risks for children in a digital environment. In 2024-2025, Malaysia has inaugurated legal transformations with the enactment of Cyber Security Act 2024 and Online Safety Act 2025; and the amendment of Communications and Multimedia (Amendment) Act 2025, Penal Code (Amendment) 2025, and Personal Data Protection (Amendment) Act 2024. The main purpose is to enhance protections facing harmful content and digital exploitation. This paper aims to examine the extent of the online safeguards for child safety under the newly introduced digital legislation in Malaysia and to compare them to those of the Australian Online Safety Act 2021 and the United Kingdom Online Safety Act 2023. The paper concludes that Malaysia should consider few highly effective initiatives impose in the Australian and the UK digital regimes including an integrated regulatory authority, risk assessments specific for children safety and stringent take down rules to be closer with international standards and practices in online child protection.