Are We Battle-Ready?

Fighting cyber crime requires concerted efforts within and beyond organizations

- Li Haohan

Cybersecurity in the ASEAN region has undergone four seismic changes over the past five years, according to Mr. Nilesh Jain, Vice President, SEA and India at leading cyber security and defense company Trend Micro.

“Firstly, the number of people connected to the Internet has grown significantly worldwide.” By end 2017, 4.1 billion people has access to the Internet, out of the 7.2 billion global population. ASEAN, with its rapidly growing economy, is expected to have 480 million Internet users – 75 per cent of its population – by 2020. “While the Internet becomes increasingly democratized,” Mr. Jain continues, “it also introduces an ever-enlarging attack surface for cybercrime activities.”

A 2017 report by global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney reveals ASEAN countries have been used as launch pads for cyberattacks, with Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam among the global hotspots for the launch of malware attacks. “There had been a strong correlation between a rise in cyberattacks and the increase in Internet users,” Mr. Jain points out.

Secondly, cyberattacks are becoming highly sophisticated. Cybercriminals no longer engage heavily in ‘spray-and-pray’ – indiscriminate attacks that did not require high technical sophistication. A Trend Micro cybersecurity roundup report has shown a marked growth in targeted and strategic attacks that focused on financial gains. “This can be observed in the increasing variety of ransomware families, highly personalized phishing attacks, and leveraging new technologies, including IoT devices or connected industrial human-machine interface, for attacks.”