Former Selangor Deputy Police Chief and Tune Talk Director brings more than 35 years of law-enforcement experience to help families move from reacting to online harm towards prevention by design
Tune Talk today announced the appointment of Dato’ Sasikala Devi Subramaniam, former Deputy Chief Police Officer of Selangor, as Brand Ambassador for Epik+ Family Safe, Tune Talk’s family prepaid plan with parental controls built into the network. As calls for child online safety increase, Dato’ Sasikala will lend her public-safety experience to Tune Talk’s public-education efforts, helping Malaysian parents better understand the risks their children face online and the practical steps they can take to reduce them.
With more than 35 years of experience in the Royal Malaysia Police, including senior roles in the Commercial Crime and Narcotics Crime Investigation Departments, Dato’ Sasikala brings a public-safety perspective shaped by first-hand experience of seeing the consequences when prevention fails.
Through her experience and public-safety perspective, Dato’ Sasikala will help strengthen the conversation on safer digital childhoods. This includes greater parental awareness, responsible connectivity, better education, clearer reporting pathways, and stronger institutional accountability.
“For many children, the first mobile connection is the beginning of their digital life. Safety should begin there too,” said Dato’ Sasikala Devi Subramaniam. “Children should not have to choose between being connected and being protected. Parents should not have to face this responsibility alone. Every institution that touches a child’s digital life, from families and schools to operators, platforms, regulators and enforcement agencies, has a role to play before harm becomes a crisis.”
From Reaction to Prevention
Children today are growing up in a digital environment that offers unprecedented access to learning, communication and entertainment, but can also expose them to age-inappropriate content, cyberbullying, manipulation, scams, harmful interactions and exploitation.
Dato’ Sasikala said protecting children in this environment requires a shift from responding to harm after it occurs towards building safeguards and awareness before problems emerge.
“At the enforcement end, we often see the consequences when prevention has failed,” she said. “That experience teaches us that child safety cannot be left to parents alone, and it cannot depend only on action after an incident.” She also stated that recent regulation, including the Online Safety Act and the restriction on social media accounts for children under 16, is an important step, but that laws and filters alone cannot protect a child. She believes this principle of prevention by design should begin with a child’s first digital experience; including clearer first-phone education, family digital agreements, accessible reporting routes, privacy-conscious safeguards and stronger digital literacy for both parents and children.
The objective, she said, is not to restrict children’s access to technology, but to help families build the knowledge, confidence, and safeguards needed to navigate the digital world more safely.
Technology as One Layer of Protection
For Tune Talk, Dato’ Sasikala’s appointment reflects a partnership that brings together the company’s role as a connectivity provider with her decades of public-safety experience, at a time when children’s digital lives are beginning earlier and families are seeking more practical guidance. This builds on Tune Talk’s introduction of Epik+ Family Safe, launched as the world’s first family prepaid plan with network-level protection, designed to help families bring safety considerations into a child’s first mobile connection.
Gurtaj Singh Padda, Co-founder and CEO of Tune Talk, said the partnership reflects the company’s belief that responsible connectivity must extend beyond simply providing access. “Protecting children today must extend beyond the physical environments we can see,” said Gurtaj. “Families are navigating a digital world that changes rapidly, often without clear or practical guidance. Dato’ Sasikala brings the experience, integrity and public-service perspective needed to make this conversation meaningful. Together, we want to help parents move from awareness to action.”
Within this wider partnership, Tune Talk’s Epik+ Family Safe provides one practical example of how child-safety safeguards can be incorporated at the connectivity layer. The plan includes network-level parental controls designed to help parents establish age-appropriate boundaries, including selectable protection levels and blocking across content categories, subject to applicable product terms.
However, Dato’ Sasikala emphasised that technology should be viewed as one layer of support within a wider child-safety ecosystem, not as a complete solution. “A filter can support a family, but it cannot replace conversation, digital literacy, responsible platform practices, school policies or law enforcement,” she said. “The strongest safeguard is a child who understands the risks, knows why boundaries exist and knows where to seek help.”
Taking the Safer Digital Childhoods Conversation Further
Dato’ Sasikala also called for greater attention to how children are introduced to their first connected devices and the digital world that comes with them. “The first phone should not simply be a moment when a child gains access to the digital world. It should also be a moment when we begin a conversation about safety, responsibility and knowing where to turn for help,” she said.
She added that child online safety should ultimately be evaluated not only by how effectively society responds to incidents, but by how effectively it prevents harm from occurring in the first place. “Child online safety should be measured with evidence, not the confidence of advertising,” said Dato’ Sasikala. “If we want better protection, we must be willing to design, teach, report and evaluate together.”
Tune Talk will continue engaging parents, educators, policymakers, civil society organisations and industry partners on practical approaches to safer digital participation for children and families.
