Security News > 2023 > December > IT Professionals in ASEAN Confronting Rising Cyber Security Risks

In July 2023, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations officially opened a joint cyber security information sharing and research centre, or Cybersecurity and Information Centre of Excellence, in a bid to increase the region's shared cyber threat defences.

At the opening of the ACICE, Singapore's Ministry of Defence said Singapore alone experienced a 174% increase in phishing attempts between 2021 and 2022, while Southeast Asia cyber crime had increased 82%. Recorded Future Chief Information Security Officer Jason Steer told TechRepublic some customers in the region felt digitisation was turning data from gold into uranium due to cyber risk.

The Asia-Pacific region as a whole was the most attacked region in the world in 2022, according to a report from IBM. Further, a July 2023 survey by Cloudflare of 4,000 cyber security managers in the region found that 78% of those interviewed had experienced at least one cyber security incident in the previous 12 months.

Cloudflare's report found that, in Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines, the largest challenge for cyber security leaders was defending against cyber attacks in the form of phishing, web attacks and business email compromise.

The region has also developed a joint cyber security strategy and data protection framework and is working on creating a unified ASEAN security emergency response team.

Skilling up ASEAN workforces is on the agenda; Malaysia has committed to training and certifying 20,000 cyber security professionals by 2025 as part of its cyber security strategy.

News URL

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/asean-cybersecurity-trends-jason-steer-interview/