Singapore bolsters cyber defences

Thursday, 9 February 2012

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Government Security

By Robin Hicks | 23 March 2010

Singapore is boosting the defences of its online critical infrastructure. Policy changes, technical controls and competency building measures will roll out this year in response to a growing cyber security threat that has seen South Korea and the United States hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the last 12 months.

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Among the new measures, which fall under the Infocomm Security Masterplan 2 (MP2), a five-year road map launched in 2008, is the introduction of business analytics tools to enable officials to spot security threats earlier.

“With infocomm security threats constantly changing, the public sector, like the people and private sectors, must keep its guard up,” said Peter Ho (pictured), Head of Civil Service, Singapore, and the Chairman of the National Infocomm Security Committee. “Defences against infocomm security threats must be continuously upgraded. It is a war without end.”

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) is coordinate a plan to ensure that the island’s internet service providers (ISPs) share security information with the government to improve early detection, and a new Code of Practice will be incorporated into the regulatory telecommunications framework to ensure that ISPs have baseline security measures in place to deal with current and emerging cyber threats.

To raise cyber awareness among businesses and the general public, the Cyber Security Awareness Alliance, which was formed in 2008 as part of MP2, is teaming up with the National Crime Prevention Council to launch a Virtual Cyber Security Park portal to educate students on ‘cyber wellness’. Social media will be used to create interest groups for sharing cyber security tips and best practice.

The role of the Cyber Security Awareness Alliance is to “build a positive culture of cyber security in Singapore,” said Acting Minister Lui Tuck Yew, of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA). “We need to adopt a collaborative approach to managing infocomm security risks among the public, private and people sectors.”

According to a recent Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, the rate at which PCs are infected with malware in Singapore fell by 8.4 per cent, to 4.7 infected computers per thousand, between the second half of 2008 and the first half of 2009, bucking a regional trend of rising computer infections.

However, Lui warned that Singapore is not immune to attack. Two thirds of Singaporean businesses were hit by cyber attacks in 2009, while cloud security vendor Zscaler estimated that 5-10 per cent of government PCs globally are infected with bots.