The Vulnerabilities of the Digital World and How to Overcome Them with AsiaPac

Published on 19 January 2023

As organisations around the world become increasingly cloud-based, automated and global, their exposure to cybersecurity risks increases as well. It was reported that in the third quarter of 2022, the number of global cyber-attacks increased by an alarming 28% as compared to the same period last year. Additionally, the average number of attacks per organisation per week amounted to a whopping 1,130. Amongst these attacks, the education and healthcare sector saw the most cyber-attacks. The attacks reach an average of 2,148 times per organisation per week.

Cybersecurity vulnerabilities

With cybersecurity threats looming at every corner of the Internet, no organisation should leave their cybersecurity up to chance. In seven out of eight countries,  they regarded cyberattacks as the biggest risk to businesses. It even surpassed the global COVID-19 pandemic and its sequential economic impacts. Such attacks are costly as well, with 40% of cyberattack victims in the USA incurring upwards of 25,000 USD in damages and rectification work. While victims in Europe suffer costs of over five million USD. The most common denominator amongst these attacks? Cyber criminals made use of the vulnerabilities in these organisations’ cloud servers to carry out these attacks. Therefore, understanding the cybersecurity risks to your organisation and knowing how to safeguard your business against these cyber-attacks is of paramount importance to not incur any unexpected losses to your organisation.

At AsiaPac, we pride ourselves on providing comprehensive digital solutions for our clients, including well-rounded cybersecurity coverage for their organisations. Our team has over a decade of experience in ensuring organisation cybersecurity. We will also be sharing some tips with you to improve your organisation’s cybersecurity.

To better prepare your organisation against cybersecurity threats, the first step is knowing the dangers that exist in the digital world. By being aware of these commonalities, you can make the necessary precautions to safeguard your business.

The Biggest Threat — Ransomware

Ransomware attacks are one of the largest threats to an organisation’s cyber security. In 2021, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore reported that 137 organisations here fell prey to such attacks. Among these victims were large enterprises, such as Singtel, proving that no one is safe.  The personal data of close to 129,000 Singtel customers were stolen, and a ransom of S$355,500 was demanded. These cybercriminals make use of lapses in an organisation’s cybersecurity to infiltrate their network, locking down vital data and computer systems until the victim pays the ‘ransom’. These attacks can incur hefty losses not only in the form of finances, in the form of ransom and/or recovery. It also affects the productivity and sales leads due to the inaccessibility of vital systems and data. 

As you can see, ransomware poses a huge risk to organisations, so much so that the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) has launched an inter-agency task force to combat ransomware. They also released a blueprint that guides organisations on how to mitigate such attacks.

Third-Party Vulnerability

Most organisations use third-party services or software for various purposes, such as employee payroll and payment processing. While a business needs these tools to run smoothly, these services often come with many vulnerabilities that expose the organisation to cybercriminals. Unfortunately, when such breaches occur, the third party is not liable for any damages incurred. In 2021, Volkswagen disclosed that they had suffered a data breach through an undisclosed associate vendor. It impacted over 3.3 million customers and prospective buyers. Therefore, an organisation should leave no stone unturned when accessing their gaps in security and do their due diligence in vendor risk assessments.

Cloud Vulnerability

With 95% of digital workloads being expected to be deployed to the Cloud by 2025, Cloud security is becoming more critical than ever. After all, as organisations begin to store more data in the cloud, these cloud databases become more titillating targets for cybercriminals.  The 2022 Thales Cloud Security Report reported that 45% of businesses around the world experienced a cloud-based data breach, or failed a cloud security audit, a 10% increase from 2021. With 66% of organisations storing anywhere between 21 – 60% of their data in the cloud, this is an alarming statistic. It highlights the vulnerability of the cloud. Therefore, a holistic strategy is needed to safeguard your organisation’s cloud.

How AsiaPac Offers Comprehensive Cybersecurity For Your Organisation

Known for our expertise in full-suite IT solutions, AsiaPac offers highly scalable cloud and IT solutions in Singapore for your every need. When it comes to your organisation’s digital security, our comprehensive, multi-pronged approach ensures the greatest coverage for your business.

We Adopt A Multi-Cloud Approach

As a leading cloud solution provider in Singapore, we understand the many security vulnerabilities and concerns that come with cloud adoption. To better protect your data, we offer multi-cloud deployment that helps our clients reduce their cyber risk. A multi-cloud deployment involves two or more cloud computing services from different providers. It does not only allow an organisation to have a diverse array of features but improve its cloud security. This is because a multi-cloud approach allows you to move your important data and workloads between clouds seamlessly when issues arise. It lowers your risk of cyber-attacks.

We Partner With The Best Security Solutions In the Market

Harnessing over 30 years of solutions integration expertise, AsiaPac has been able to deliver innovative, complex projects, with security blueprints embedded. Partnering with best-in-breed Cyber Security vendors, we endeavour to provide industry-leading Consultancy services to operationalise our customer’s business objectives. “Immutable Clean Data”, one of our most successful projects this year that we delivered to a local bank in Singapore. We conceived it through an upcoming regulatory requirement from the Hong Kong MAS. It is also because of the bank’s initiative to advance into the next phase of their cybersecurity framework. The solution enabled the bank to have a truly clean set of data in an air-gap environment. It is for recovery in the event of a massive cybersecurity attack. Thus, we can ensure the continuation of banking operations.

While the rest of the industry has been discussing storage immutability and utilising industry standards of signature-based detection to ensure data is clean, AsiaPac goes beyond that. We adopt a zero-trust-like posture. We implement it by assuming a data breach, verifying and logging data explicitly. Then, render the file harmless even before we store the backup in immutable storage.

We Monitor Your Systems Round The Clock

Using our state-of-the-art Network Operations Centre, AsiaPac can monitor your network and systems 24/7 regardless of their location—on-premises, hosted or cloud. Our team works tirelessly behind the scenes to detect any possible threats, diagnose them and rectify them immediately. We also provide detailed reports on the threats, as well as the steps taken to prevent the same issues from reoccurring. By undertaking the system and network monitoring for our clients, we provide peace of mind for our clients. This way they can focus on what’s important — running the business.

AsiaPac, Your Trusted Defence Against Ransomware and Cyber Threats

Cloud and network security go beyond antiviruses and simple software solutions. At AsiaPac, we understand the importance of safeguarding an organisation’s data and systems, and the detrimental impact of any breaches. That is why we adopt a holistic and decisive approach towards cybersecurity. We conduct security assessments to understand the risk profiles of our clients, before addressing security fundamentals such as the security awareness of users. We then keep vigilance on the common vectors of attack and vulnerabilities —email, endpoint or network. Therefore, we can protect the crown jewels of our clients with zero-trust frameworks and Identity and Access Management systems.

While we are proud our commitment to excellence over the last 30 years has allowed us to win several awards for our services, we are even more gratified to be the solution provider that has kept organisations in Singapore safe from cyber-attacks and criminals.

Tags:  Cloud Computing Services, Cloud Security, Cloud Security Solutions, Cyber Security Solutions, Cyber threats, Digital Security, Mandiant, Multi-Cloud Solutions, Ransomware Protection, Ransomware Security, Trend Micro, 

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