The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) has released a Singapore Cyber Landscape (SCL) 2022 report to provide an overview of the local cyber threat landscape. It advises organisations to look out for new cyberattack trends.
The first trend is ransom for reputation. As more people are willing to accept the news of a data breach at face value, bad actors are turning their focus to data exfiltration and public shaming on “leak sites”. They might also conjure fictional breaches by publicising repackaged data from prior breaches or information fused through open-source data scraping.
AI-driven cyber attacks are another upcoming trend. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more accessible and advanced, cyber attackers may leverage such technology for their nefarious activities, such as launching highly-targeted spear-phishing campaigns.
Threat actors may also use AI-enabled deepfakes to impersonate C-suite executives to facilitate account takeovers, business fraud, or impact the share price or reputation of an organisation.
“Emerging technologies, like chatbots, are double-edged, as with many new technologies. While we should be optimistic about the opportunities it brings, we have to manage its accompanying risks. The government will continue to step up our efforts to protect our cyberspace, but we need businesses and individuals to play their part too, so that we can fully reap the benefits of our digital future,” says David Koh, CSA’s commissioner of cybersecurity and chief executive.
Improving cybersecurity together
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To help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) further strengthen their cyber defence capability, CSA will be launching a scheme in Q3 of 2023 to provide subsidised cybersecurity consultancy services. Additionally, it offers tailored cybersecurity health plans to help SMEs work towards national cybersecurity certification, such as CSA’s Cyber Essentials mark.
Cybersecurity consultants will take on the role of the SMEs’ chief information security officers (similar to providing a CISO-as-a-Service) to help SMEs address their challenge of hiring cybersecurity personnel.
This scheme complements CSA’s Internet Hygiene Portal (IHP). It offers SMEs easy access to resources and self-assessment tools so that they can adopt internet security best practices as they digitalise.
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IHP also provides visibility on the cyber hygiene of digital platforms through an Internet Hygiene Rating (IHR) table. Since its launch last year, the IHP has been used by both local and overseas entities to conduct more than 60,000 website and email scans, with more than 2,300 scanned domains across different sectors showing an improvement in their internet hygiene.
Since cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility, CSA will launch a new national cybersecurity campaign later this year, focusing on raising awareness and driving the adoption of good cybersecurity practices. It augments CSA’s existing efforts to target various stakeholders, including students and seniors, under SG Cyber Safe Students and Seniors Programmes.
In collaboration with various government agencies — such as the Ministry of Education, Singapore Police Force, and the Infocomm Media Development Authority — CSA reaches out to the target groups too through platforms such as roadshows, videos and games.
Initiatives such as the Go Safe Online Pop-up and Go Safe Online Drama Skit for students have reached 280 schools, libraries, and community spaces, while CSA has engaged more than 80,000 seniors under the SG Cyber Safe Seniors Programme since the launch of the programmes in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
