Asia is in the middle of a digital revolution, with a booming market for consumer electronics and a fast-growing startup scene. 
The explosive growth makes organizations in the Asia-Pacific region especially attractive to criminals and hackers. They are playing a game of cat-and-mouse, with defenders trying to secure information within the enterprise and attackers trying to access it unlawfully.
Breaches are no longer confined to the West, and cyber-espionage is on the rise across the world. The EMC Global Data Protection Index estimated 64 percent of enterprises experienced data loss or downtime in 2014, costing organizations $1.7 trillion in losses. The latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found 38 percent of attacks in 2014 took seconds to execute, but 25 percent of breaches took days or longer to be discovered.
While individual figures for Asia are not readily available, there is enough anecdotal evidence that cyber-attackers are targeting businesses and individuals in the region.
Breaches aren’t just getting more frequent—they are getting more sophisticated, too. Criminals are going after more valuable pieces of data and attackers are using increasingly advanced methods to craft their campaigns. Part of the problem is a dearth of education and knowledge about how to deal with a cyber threat. Many businesses don’t consider they will be targeted, and others have weak or outdated response plans in place.
Information security in Asia has never been in a greater climate of change.While no individual or business can be 100 percent safe from attack, great steps can be taken to mitigate the impact. Because in today’s hyper connected always-on world, it isn’t a case of if, it’s a case of when. There are five key areas any business can invest time and resource in:
- Education – for staff to both recognize the signs of malware and cyber-attacks, and also best practice to avoid future breaches
- Investment – into intelligent technology that continually monitors and protects your organization
- Research – into the latest threats, trends and developments to ensure your business can anticipate attacks and mitigate their impact
- Training – for staff in the event of a breach. Effective disaster response plans can make the difference between a serious breach, and a catastrophic attack
- Planning – for every eventuality, no matter how severe or unlikely.
Improve your chances of not only recovering from an attack quickly, but understanding the risks your business faces, by joining more than 5,000 other security professionals at this year’s RSA Conference in Singapore from 22-24 July.
Register by 20th June to take advantage of the early bird rate of just S$700, and join thousands of other security professionals in making sense of the changing world of Asian information security.
