Singapore must protect its digital landscape at all cost

THE attack on SingHealth, Singapore's largest group of healthcare institutions, is a rude reminder that the boom in Internet of Things technologies has brought along with it one of the biggest security nightmares - the vulnerability of billions of connected devices and machines to every type of hacking imaginable.

With growing hyper-connectivity, across both government and civilian infrastructure, as Singapore builds on its Smart Nation aspirations, the digital landscape has become the ultimate battleground for cyber intrusion and cyber terrorists. In what is the most serious breach of personal data in Singapore to date, hackers stole the personal particulars of 1.5 million SingHealth patients. Of these, 160,000 people, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and a few ministers, had their outpatient prescriptions stolen as well. The data theft happened between June 27, 2018 and July 4, 2018.

As alarming and costly as financial identity theft would potentially be, the ramifications from a breach of medical data security could well be more insidious, if personal records are stolen for blackmailing or other nefarious purposes. Victims won't know exactly when or how the pilfered information could be used against them.