The digital revolution has undoubtedly improved our daily lives and work, from bringing to us vast amounts of information at our very fingertips to communicating easily with co-workers across physical borders.

However, online criminal activity has grown in tandem, looking to exploit the world’s growing interconnectivity for their own malicious intent.

In Singapore, 2019 saw an increase in frequency and sophistication of cyber threats compared to the previous year, according to a recent report published by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA). Cybercrime cases in Singapore jumped 52 per cent to 9,430 in 2019, and accounted for more than a quarter of all crimes in Singapore.

Recognizing the dire consequences, business leaders are looking towards their CTOs to ensure that adequate preventive steps are taken. Cyber security spending is projected to reach USD 270 billion by 2026, with the average company spending 16 per cent of their IT budget on cyber security.

With budgets set to expand due to the digital transformation, CTOs need to justify the return on investment on these additional costs to deal with a constantly evolving cyber threat landscape.

THE NEW CHALLENGES

• Rising Costs of Data Breaches: Studies have shown that the cost of a data breach for companies has risen 12% in the past five years and reached a stunning USD 3.86 million on average, exemplifying the tangible risks confronting businesses daily.
• New regulations in Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) reflect the growing importance of protecting data, and the increased cost of data breaches. Besides monetary losses there is also reputational damage that accompany any data breach that will shake customer confidence and may be even harder to recover from than a financial cost. It is no wonder that business leaders look towards the CTO’s to ensure the best preventive actions are taken to minimize the financial impact.
• Limited resources, limited response: Many businesses lack the resources and expertise needed to cope with modern cybercrime, especially among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One study revealed that nearly two out of three Singapore SMEs experienced a cyber incident in 2018, even though nearly half had assumed it will never experience one.
• More and more, organizations are realizing that the question isn’t if they will suffer a cyber-attack, but when they will, and how they can respond and recover fast. CTOs are confronted with having to make the tough decision of getting ‘enough’ protection fully knowing what truly would be ‘enough’.
• This cyber resilience has become a significantly important issue for business leaders, especially in light of the need for business continuity even during attacks. Without an integrated security solution that not only monitors for old and new threats but proactively counteracts them, CTOs and their IT security staff are left with little light in the dark.
• Increasing Prevalence of DDoS Attacks: The CSA had highlighted compromised systems and malware infections as growing threats across industries in Singapore in its 2019 Threat Report. These compromised systems are then exploited to launch Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.
• Studies have shown that an average of 16 DDoS attacks occur every minute. These attacks generate a flood of illegitimate traffic on the organization’s network, eventually overwhelming it. These attacks can even be used as a smoke screen to distract your security team, and mask more significant cyber security intrusions into a company’s network.
• Growing Infrastructure Broadens Vulnerabilities: All these challenges are exacerbated by the growing size and complexity of enterprise IT infrastructures. Every new technology adopted, and every new device added onto the network provide organizations the opportunity to enhance productivity and improve decision-making. At the same time, they also broaden the scope of potential vulnerabilities and open more avenues for attack.
• With work from home, CTOs need to worry about each home location as well because they effectively become branch offices within your network, increasing the complexity of network management.
• With these challenges in mind, CTO’s are confronted with a delicate balancing act between implementing new technologies and programs swiftly to assist their business’ growth while ensuring no additional vulnerabilities are introduced.

With the digitalization of everything leading to more connected devices – IDC predicts that there will be 41.6 billion connected IoT devices by 2025 – every additional connected device provides digital criminals with another vector to probe and infiltrate a company’s network.

This means that businesses require flexible and robust solutions that can be deployed instantly across their infrastructure, even down to employees’ homes, to address the continuously evolving threat. This has increased demand for Security-as-a-Service solutions, which enable companies to deploy offerings based on their own needs on-demand.

Given the variety of virtual solutions available in the market, CTOs and IT decision makers are always under pressure to pick the right offering for their company, and ensure that they have the right combination of preventive measures against cybersecurity threats without over-subscribing to offerings not suitable for their business.

This is of paramount importance when we look specifically at protecting the network, which is the heart of the company.

SPTEL’S DEFENDABLE NETWORK BY DESIGN

“Cyber security should not be an afterthought or a heavy expense – if you have a network that can deliver clean pipe capabilities and cyber security on demand.”

Being a pure B2B network provider, we understand that your business requires a different standard of care as compared to consumers. Your network needs to be defendable by nature to ensure your business continuity for uninterrupted service delivery.

‘Clean Pipe’ Network
With past DDoS attacks being used by malicious attackers as distractions for more serious data breaches, minimizing response time is key to reduce any impact on your business.

SPTel is the only network provider to offer customers internet network services with in-built DDoS attack detection by default. The network will proactively alert you of any attack incidences. We enable you to make informed decision quickly, save time in mitigating the attack and minimise any impact to your business.

SPTel’s hassle free purchase process and businesses friendly commercial model provide the convenience and flexibility to businesses, to only pay for their cyber security services when needed instead of ‘what if’ insurance-like policies or for preventive measures.

Integrated Operations Centre
SPTel operates an Integrated Operations Centre that provide 24x 7 combines network monitoring with security monitoring to all our customers in Commercial and Government sectors. This is especially beneficial for businesses seeking cost-effective networking solutions supported with a world-class Security Operations Centre.

Our network is defended by ST Engineering’s SOC, whose technologies have been audited and rated as comparable to leading SOCs globally. It combines machine-based analytics with automation capabilities, enabling businesses to react swiftly and proactively against cyber security threats.
businesses to react swiftly and proactively against cyber security threats.

Seamless Customer Experience
With our on-demand provisioning via SPTel’s Customer Portal, any cyber security service selected will be quoted for instantly and deployed within minutes providing customers with full transparency on their spends and subscribed services. Customers will also have the option of one-time mitigation or short-term mitigation without locking in to long term contracts for improved total cost of ownership.

Singapore 1st! Corporate security extension to home offices with SDWAN integration
SPTel has integrated an SD-WAN solution with the management dashboard that will give customers additional visibility over their network utility, manage network traffic and configurations, even for employees working on their home networks. This will extend their secure corporate network environment to the home, removing the need for additional VPNs and improve productivity of segregated teams. This provides customers with a one-stop management dashboard for full control over their ICT applications, a first in Singapore.

Are you interested to find out more about how SPTel can help defend your network against malicious attackers? Contact us for more information, or drop us an email if you have any questions.