Smart economy must be defended with stronger cyber security

SINGAPORE'S economy is becoming increasingly digitalised, with mobility, cloud computing and IoT (Internet of Things) making services more accessible to ordinary citizens.

The benefits of this are obvious. For example, it is now possible to do a host of transactions with a mobile phone - ranging from checking one's CPF (Central Provident Fund) account to banking and online shopping. This seamless ability to access services and information is one of the cornerstones of Singapore's Smart Nation push and 2016 will see many new services becoming available. However, digitalisation comes with a cost that results in security concerns. This has been so for the past few years but going forward, the dangers of cyber attacks causing major damage and loss will increase as criminals employ sophisticated hacking tools to exploit the data being generated with an unprecedented number of people going online.

Security specialists agree that 2016 will see a massive increase in cyber espionage and attacks orchestrated not only by groups, but also by nation states. Giving the examples of the recent US Office of Personnel Management breach, the attack of US retail giant Target and the Sony Pictures hack, they reckon more such attacks are likely. Despite its small size, prosperous Singapore is a ripe target. Take the example of mobile-phone usage. With a mobile-phone penetration rate in the region of 150 per cent, Singapore's monthly average mobile-data usage in the third quarter of 2015 was in the region of 10.9 petabytes. The app-based eco-system of smartphones is responsible for this surge in data usage.