Digital immune systems key to safeguarding S'pore's future economy

SINGAPORE continues to turn to digital capabilities and connectivity to drive economic growth. Already a trusted global business and financial hub, Singapore recently became home to the world's best digital bank, continues to accelerate fintech (fincial technology) innovation, and is among the first to test autonomous vehicles on roads and at ports.

With the Committee on the Future Economy's recommendations, the nation-state is expected to make a strong push to build further capabilities in data analytics and encourage small and medium enterprises to adopt digital technologies to create new revenue opportunities.

While there is no denying that the mainstream adoption of data analytics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles and other emerging technology will transform and enhance local businesses, they will also make us vulnerable to a new era of threat. In the past 12 months, an average organisation in Singapore was subjected to 138 targeted cyber-attacks, 30 per cent more than the global average. This is no coincidence, given Singapore's digital dependence, sophistication and the huge volume of sensitive and valuable business information passing through the country's networks each day.

The cybersecurity challenge is therefore not one of keeping up with other countries, but keeping up with a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape. Today's most damaging attacks are subtle, stealthy and novel. We are already seeing artificial intelligence being used in cyber-attacks, for example, polymorphic malware that changes its attributes mid-attack to evade detection. We've also seen the targeting of non-standard devices such as biometric sensors, coffee machines, routers, video-conferencing devices and printers.

Many organisations often lack visibility and underestimate the complexity of their networks. They are unaware of employees who might be working via unauthorised smartphones or laptops, or even existing connections to devices that belong to ex-employees or external vendors, and are therefore unable to fully secure their networks. The reality is that no man - or approaches that involve manual threat detection - can keep up with such complexity and threats being executed at lightening speeds. As the threats evolve, our response needs to evolve as well.

The government is taking active steps to combat the escalating cyber-threat, with the Cyber Security Agency having launched Singapore's Cybersecurity Strategy, and the successful execution of Exercise Cyber Star, as well as various partnerships with countries, tertiary institutions and the private sector. But the emphasis must first and foremost be on technological defence. Looking ahead, the nation's readiness to embrace artificial intelligence and unsupervised machine learning will become central to the cybersecurity of organisations across all industry verticals, from finance to healthcare to manufacturing.

Many organisations in Singapore have already deployed unsupervised machine learning defences, helping security professionals detect, investigate, remediate and respond to cyber-threats before they escalate into crises, and faster than is humanly possible. With machines covering the groundwork, cybersecurity training, whether in local organisations or in national service, should focus on developing complementary skill sets such as high-level threat analysis and mitigation.

Ultimately, the higher organisations build their walls, the taller cyber-attackers will make their ladders. Whether it be a criminal gang or a malicious insider, we must now assume that the threat is already on the inside. In fact, about 85 per cent of networks are already infiltrated in some way. This calls for a shift away from traditional perimeter or rule-based defences and instead towards an immune system approach to security.

Just as the human immune system intuitively and automatically defends against bacteria that have penetrated the skin, organisations in Singapore need to use best-of-breed unsupervised machine learning technologies and develop digital "immune systems" to identify the threats already inside their networks. With the increased adoption of unsupervised machine learning for cyber-defence, Singapore can stay ahead of today's savvy attackers in the fight to defend its booming digital economy.

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