Singapore to step up cyber defence efforts

Singapore to step up cyber defence efforts
Republic to strengthen ties with other govts to fight online threats


By WINSTON CHAI

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LOCAL authorities will forge closer ties with other governments across the globe in a concerted effort to tackle the onslaught of computer viruses and other Internet threats, said Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Vivian Balakrishnan.



Dr Balakrishnan: "Given the borderless nature of cyber threats, what happens in one country could very well propagate effects to another if left unmitigated.'
According to Dr Balakrishnan, Singapore has already made strides in collaborating with other countries to strengthen its cyber defence, such as holding regular exchanges with Computer Emergency Response Teams from other countries. In addition, it signed a pact with French authorities last year to share Internet security-related information.

He was speaking at an annual government security seminar organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) yesterday.

'Given the borderless nature of cyber threats, what happens in one country could very well propagate effects to another if left unmitigated. Moving forward, we hope to engage our international counterparts even more actively so that we can improve our collective abilities to combat cyber threats,' Dr Balakrishnan stressed.

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Click here to read the full text of Dr Vivian Balakrishnan's speech


Heightened collaboration with other countries is one of the key strategies that will be included in IDA's new five-year infocomm security masterplan to be unveiled next year.

As a boost to this effort, Singapore is set to be the first Asian country to host Meridian 2008, an IT security conference aimed at public-sector officials from around the world.

The event will be held in October next year and aims to provide participants with insights into policy-making and strategies to protect a country's critical IT infrastructure.

On the infrastructure front, Dr Balakrishnan revealed that IDA's coming masterplan will also look into measures to safeguard Singapore's Next Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure, an ultra high-speed broadband highway that will connect homes and businesses by the year 2012.

Under the regulator's existing infocomm security roadmap, which was released in 2005, the IDA introduced a host of initiatives to improve the security of IT systems in the public sector.

These include the setting up of a so-called Cyber-Watch Centre to monitor local government networks round the clock, in a bid to nip malicious Internet activities in the bud. The facility is staffed by 12 IT security experts and started operations last month.