January 1, 2016
The Republic’s success as a financial hub owes much to the ability of its banking and financial sectors to guard against cyber attacks. However, other sectors are not as capable. That is why the Republic’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA) is keen to raise standards across all sectors.
It hopes to achieve this by setting up Security Operation Centres in every sector.
The CSA said the Home Affairs Ministry and Land Transport Authority have already established Security Operations Centres for their respective sectors, while other critical public-sector IT installations are overseen by the Cyber Watch Centre, set up in 2007.
The aim of the new Centres is to raise awareness and build capabilities and safeguard critical infrastructure from cyberattack.
“Some of the sectors are less capable, less familiar with the threat. So we need to educate them, build up their operational capability and help them to establish similar kinds of cybersecurity ops centres,” said Mr David Koh, Chief Executive of CSA. “Ultimately the plan is for us to reach a stage where we can do cross-sector exercises, because sectors have different interdependencies on each other.”