If one has been keeping abreast of the news agenda, one would have seen organisations being plagued with numerous data breaches. Almost every industry has been hit with an incident of some sort from aviation, telecoms companies to furniture retailers – no one has been spared.

As a result, the question facing many startups and companies today is: Will I be next?

As companies big and small pivoted digitally in 2020, work from home has become the norm. While this practice afforded workers with the flexibility of remote working and maintain business continuity, it has also introduced a new set of cybersecurity challenges.

For example, Kaspersky’s telemetry revealed that the total number of remote desktop protocol attacks jumped from 93.1 million worldwide in February 2020 to 277.4 million in March 2020, a 197 per cent increase as countries around the region began to implement lockdown procedures.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – the shift to remote working, as well as other trends as to how five in 10 organisations in the region are reportedly still using outdated and unpatched software – all paint a picture of the vulnerabilities companies and startups face in today’s digital age.

To remedy this, a shift from a reactive “will it happen” to a proactive “when will it happen” approach is crucial, with hybrid work environments and home offices here to stay. Businesses, particularly startups and their preference for nomadic life, need to be on alert as data breaches will become more commonplace.

The challenging climate of data breaches

While every startup or company is frantically pushing to be the next big thing in tech, so too, should they accelerate their efforts at enhancing their cybersecurity posture.

Also Read: How can privacy-focussed apps step up amid a world of data breaches?

In most cases, a data breach exposes confidential, sensitive, or protected information to an unauthorised person. It can occur in various forms, with the most common ones include phishing, brute force attacks and malware.

In our view, these are just some of the trends we have observed when it comes to the challenges businesses and start-ups face when it comes to guarding against data breaches in the region:

• Lack of knowledge on personal data storage and processing laws: Many governments try to safeguard the security of their citizens, whilst Asia is still playing catch up with their Western counterparts on this front, all these laws still apply regardless of whether one has read them.
• Unpreparedness in the face of DDoS attacks: Distributed Denial of Service is an efficient way to down an internet resource. On the darknet, this service goes for cheap and therefore is quite affordable for competitors and cybercriminals who need them as cover for more sophisticated attempts.
• Poor employee awareness: Humans are usually the weak link in businesses. Attackers know full well to exploit this link and often use social engineering tricks to penetrate the corporate network or fish out confidential info.

How then, should businesses and start-ups go about developing a sensible cybersecurity posture and more importantly, how can a data breach affect them?

Why should businesses care about cybersecurity?

In today’s highly digitised societies, a business’s digital reputation counts for everything. According to our Digital Economy Reputation report, 49 per cent of social media users in the region have admitted that they will check the social media accounts of a brand before purchasing their goods and services. An additional 38 per cent also stopped using a company’s or brand’s products once they were embroiled in a crisis.

Clearly, an organisation’s reputation matters to consumers and the damage caused by a data breach goes beyond the depletion of public goodwill, but also financial as well. As of 2020, a breach costs an enterprise US$1.09m and a small to medium-sized business (SMB) US$101k, compared to US$1.41 million and US$108k respectively in 2019.

However, the risk can be managed by taking proactive action. Acting now will allow your organisation to be in a stronger position to recover should a breach happen.

Planning a tailor-made cybersecurity approach for your business

Today, one of the most important ingredients for any business looking to grow is flexibility. One can always opt for the most comprehensive cybersecurity solution, but this could lead to overkill and waste whatever precious resources one could have dedicated to powering business growth.

Also Read: 5 cybersecurity strategies every startup must know

On the other hand, not investing in a cybersecurity solution is a big no-no if you’re genuinely interested in growing your business sustainably. As a starting point, it is worth establishing a few good habits that are easy and free:

• Update software regularly, including router and other network device firmware;
• Keep an eye on the expiration date of security certificates and security software licenses;
• Make backup copies of data, and if your company automates the process, periodically check that it is being done correctly;
• Revoke access permissions from employees as soon as they are no longer required;
• Use security solutions to help monitor the health and status of your corporate infrastructure.

Having established your foundation, a business should look at which areas to prioritise by adopting a cybersecurity service model that can flex and accommodate the increased needs and capacity of the business.

It may be tempting in the short term to enjoy small cost savings in buying your own infrastructure. However, don’t forget to factor in maintenance cost, replacement, scalability and fault tolerance requirements.

Finally, when the business has entered a phase of aggressive expansion, one can consider implementing threat intelligence detection (proactive threat hunting) to their cybersecurity arsenal. Driven by continuous machine learning, it can save IT security teams resources for threat analysis, investigation and response.

An example would be Kaspersky’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) which contains an outsourced security operations centre that does not require specialised threat hunting and incident analysis skills from internal teams.

Cyber security now part and parcel of a business’s growth strategy however, it doesn’t have to be daunting – one should not face it alone. The cybersecurity community is here to help and offer advice and assistance whenever you are ready.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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The recent Earth Day celebration in late April helped to focus minds in financial services by providing business leaders with an opportunity to communicate to shareholders, and the market at large, their vision for sustainability over the coming decade. 

At around the same time, I was participating as a speaker on a panel in Singapore alongside the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Tribe Accelerator, and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA).

As we shared our thoughts on macro trends in green finance and fintech, it became apparent that one of the questions coming up time and again was the need to balance and bridge sustainability alongside profitability (after all, corporations are for-profit enterprises and not charities).

The Financial Times, in an article this week, highlighted the challenge this poses for much of the market and global economy as we chart a path to net zero.

Finance is laser focused on green

While all stakeholders in the sector have their part to play in pushing the convergence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles in financial services, the approach taken varies depending on where you are sitting: as the technology provider, financial institution or bank, government/regulator, or something else entirely.

In the last few years, there’s no doubt we’ve seen a macro trend towards green fintech as a partnership between technology companies and financial institutions.

Also Read: The evolution from open banking to open finance

Banks are realising they have a responsibility to be able to help in tracking the greenness of a given project, investment or transaction as climate change is recognised as fact, not fiction. 

With more key players acting towards green and sustainability, a new norm is observed where sustainable companies are profitable — and to be profitable, companies have to be sustainable.

It is in this space that I think technology has a key role to play, including delivering on greater democratisation of finance and improving access for all. 

But here’s a key point: the greatest impact is only possible through technology platforms partnering with the existing financial institutions, which already have millions of users.

Fintech has arguably been at the forefront of reducing costs, improving efficiencies, and enabling greater access to markets — whether that’s through trade clearing and settlement, ESG tracking, or digital bond issuance.

But regulators, too, must do their part.

Regulators are stepping up

In Singapore, banks have to report to MAS so that it can conduct overall assessments of financial stability with regards to environmental or climate risks. 

I know from my conversations with them that MAS is focused on how to attract green finance to Singapore, and how to position themselves as leading green finance centres.

Encouraging the industry to collaborate or pilot technology solutions to solve some of the major challenges in finance remains an important mandate for any central bank. Bridging private sector sustainability with profitability is an area where regulators have a unique role to play.

This is because regulators are unique in their ability to provide grants and co-funding projects, whether it’s proof of concepts (POCs) or actual implementations, that help private businesses working towards ESG solutions to succeed.

Adopting new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) to better monitor and track the performance of a green project, bond or loan is an area many private firms will need to look at implementing to better monitor their supply chains. 

Also Read: How can fintech help agriculture

Currently, less than 0.3 per cent of all bond financing is green, with insufficient efforts leading to a US$2.6 trillion annual funding deficit towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

This gap stems from the absence of an efficient common data infrastructure as a nexus between the financial industry and ESG efforts, with often-fragmented data exacerbated by the lack of transparency in impact reporting and usage of proceeds.

Enter the nimble fintech

In the same way fintech companies contributed to addressing problems of financial inclusion for SMEs and underserved communities in the past decade, they have now set their sights on helping financial institutions transition to more sustainable operations.

Even something like the funding of solar panels on a small factory can be made more affordable and accessible through new technology that today’s fintech are building.

Whether it’s on the data side, blockchain, or IoT that measures and verifies said data, fintech is figuring out how to apply it to commercial green use cases.

Today, when we talk about sustainability, the stakeholders are very wide — it’s not just the banks, it’s also the investment companies, the sovereign wealth funds, every foundation, family office, and next generation wealth manager. 

Even the most profitable companies in the world, who don’t need to do any of this in order to become more profitable, are still looking at their environmental commitments and responsibilities.

Also Read: Sustainability: the new business reality

Based on the response I’m seeing from all stakeholders today, I believe there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future of green fintech.

We’re seeing increased interest from the private sector coming in, driven by the leadership of our various sovereign wealth funds like Temasek, who just declared that they’re going to be 100 per cent green.

My hope is that regulators, investors, and institutions continue to support the next generation of financial infrastructure that is being built by risk-taking fintech entrepreneurs. 

By future-proofing our financial market infrastructure for a greener decade, financial incentives or penalties can be more easily programmed towards achieving sustainable performance targets applicable to different ESG financing instruments across bonds, loans, and renewable energy certificates. 

If we get it right as an industry that comes together, I’m convinced the ESG financing gap will be bridged by 2030 — and I look forward to contributing to this green fintech revolution in my own small way.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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(This article has been updated with more details about the trends in the industry and the impact of COVID-19 on Eezee)

Eezee, a Singapore-based online B2B marketplace for industrial hardware and supplies, has received an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A round led by Wavemaker Partners.

Other investors in the round include January Capital, the Pags Group, the family office of Bain Capital’s Stephen Pagliuca, and existing investor Insignia Ventures.

Along with this equity round, Eezee also secured an undisclosed debt facility from Polaris, the strategic partnerships arm of Goldbell Financial Services.

Also Read: Infightings, quitting of key people didn’t deter this entrepreneur from realising his dream

Co-founder and CEO Logan Tan told e27 that Eezee will use the fresh capital to double down the business development effort to get wider market adoption especially within Singapore.

“We’re also looking for our first business development hire on the ground within Philippines and Indonesia,” he added.

Established in 2017 by Logan Tan, Terence Goh, and Jasper Yap, Eezee enables businesses to make small value purchases on industrial supplies such as safety gloves and helmets without the hassle of bureaucratic procurement processes and paperwork.

For buyers, Eezee acts as an online marketplace that consolidates a range of brands and products, so they can compare the prices of goods and suppliers. Its catalogue includes safety shoes, safety glasses, safety goggles, safety harness, personal protective equipment, power tools and hardware.

As for sellers, the platform helps them to manage sales orders and categorise their stock, as well as source other items from other suppliers when requested to by their customers.

“Our platform elevates business processes by integrating with ERPs such as SAP Ariba, Oracle and Coupa, thus enabling businesses remain compliant with governance objectives in an accelerated manner. In 2020, our partnership with Shell to digitalise procurement delivered 20per cent cost savings from integration, thus drastically reducing man hours while offering a wide range of competitively priced products on their marketplace,” he said in a press statement.

Logan said that the firm also delivers products outside of Singapore. “Some of our top countries are Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. We have some business dealings regionally (majority of our exports goes to regional with the top three countries dominating 60 per cent of our exports). We also ship our products beyond regional but currently very fragmented.”

The startup recently partnered with the Singapore government to enable its 150,000 civil servants to procure items directly from the platform.

Also Read: Singapore’s B2B marketplace Eezee raises funding from Insignia for Asia expansion

Eezee’s Chief Commercial Officer Shawn Seet shared: “Eezee is not just a marketplace — we’re an ecosystem. International business buyers use us as we provide an unparalleled procurement experience. Suppliers partner with us as they renew their lifespan by integrating with us to reach customers they could never serve. The potential of this connectivity is limitless.”

Over the past four years, Eezee has developed an effective template for driving digitalisation of the procurement process that they aim to bring to the rest of the region.

In September 2019, Eezee had bagged an undisclosed sum in seed funding from Insignia Ventures for business expansion.

Impact of COVID-19

According to Logan, COVID-19 has had a positive impact on the business. When the pandemic first hit, Eezee’s order volume jumped due to the rise of demand for PPE (personal protective equipment) kits and masks, etc.

“We then started to see significant interest from our clients to utilise the platform and they are more receptive to digital solutions. The panic purchases and spike in volume eventually fades away with more stable growth MoM. Overall, there’s positive impact on our business,” he remarked.

Trends

Logan is seeing a seeing a shift in behaviours towards B2B digital commerce, not just for industrial supplies but across various categories such as F&B, FMCG and many more.

“Although the shift is still in a very early phase, there’s positive signs that we have secured major clients that are very supportive of our journey. The world gets more and more connected, businesses will follow suit as well,” he said.

“My personal belief is that as the consumer world gets digitalised, businesses will follow suit. Due to the ever-growing digital gaps between the consumer and business world, it’s inevitable that the digital technology will gain a significant footing into the business world,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: Eezee

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Fortuna Cools, a Philippine startup seeking to find an alternative to plastics, has secured a seed investment round led by ADB Ventures, the impact investment arm of Asian Development Bank, and Katapult Ocean Fund.

Pasudeco Development Corporation, the Manila Angel Investors Network, she1k, and Nardo Holdings, also joined the round.

The financial terms were not disclosed.

Fortuna Cools will use the capital to grow its sales and engineering teams, as well as finance its higher production volumes to reduce unit costs and benefit more farmers, co-founder and CEO David Cutler told e27.

Also Read: This Indian startup makes cutlery using sugarcane waste

Started in 2018 by Cutler and Tamara Mekler, Fortuna Cools began working on “up-cycled, high-performance” coolers in the archipelago, alongside small-scale agricultural communities and the NGO ‘Rare‘. These coolers were designed to help fishermen preserve their catch without relying on fragile Styrofoam boxes.

According to Cutler, Fortuna Cools was soon inundated with requests for sustainable, long-lasting coolers from different sectors and locations.

“We are commercialising coolers. Our first product, the Fortuna Coconut Cooler, is available today in the Philippines as a B2B product for fresh food packaging and the transport of perishable goods,” he shared. “It is marketed to major food distributors, farmer cooperatives, and grocery stores in Southeast Asia.

Cutler said the prices are already competitive with many existing insulated packaging options, with significant discounts available at higher volumes.

The startup will soon launch its second product, the Nutshell Cooler, as an eco-conscious consumer product in key international markets. It seeks to fill a glaring gap in an eco-conscious market without any eco-friendly options.

“The Nutshell Cooler is built with our same natural fibre insulation that we’ve developed over the past few years. But there are various differences in the design to make it suitable for outdoor recreation and casual use (e.g. trip to the beach, weekend getaway, even grocery shopping),” he explained.

A portion of the capital just raised will be go into the launching of Nutshell Cooler, he said.

“Material innovation is key to solving the plastic waste problem in our oceans,” said Ross Brooks, Investment Manager at Katapult Ocean. “Fortuna’s nature-based insulation solution not only aims to replace plastic foam, but in doing so will provide communities with a more robust and lower cost cold storage solution. Fortuna’s solution has the potential to create a positive impact in both environmental and social domains.”

Also Read: Impact-tech investor ADB Ventures in talks to raise US$100M debt fund

“We hear the demand for less plastic waste among everyone from fish traders to sunbathers, while small-scale coconut farmers have no choice today but to burn their piles of leftover husks. We are proud that positive impact is built into every fibre we use,” Cutler said.

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Image Credit: Fortuna Cools

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According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), more than half of the world’s population today is below 30. Despite that, there is a growing divide between banks and the younger generation.

More than 45 per cent of respondents to WEF’s Global Shapers survey disagreed with the statement that they trusted banks to be fair and honest.

Amidst this distrust, how can banks regain the trust of the next generation of consumers? The answer lies in how they approach storing the financial data of their customers. Hampered by the need to adhere to strict regulations regarding the exchange of such data, banks previously chose to store them in silos.

However, times have changed.

Powered by an open ecosystem where APIs facilitated the exchange of digital financial data across platforms, new-age fintech companies are now able to offer better financial products for their customers.

Users duly responded to a more convenient and personalised experience by switching to the services of these disruptors.

Change in perception

Having witnessed the success these companies derived from an open API platform, banks in Europe and North America soon took a page out of their playbook and decided to embrace it.

The move saw banks unlock their vaults of consumer financial data. With an open ecosystem where banks could freely exchange information such as transaction and income history with one another, they began to see the advantages – they were understanding their customers better.

With the relative success of open banking in the West, regulators within Southeast Asia started to follow suit. 

Also Read: Banking on a green future of finance: How to bridge sustainability and profitability

The Indonesian financial services authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, OJK) released an open API framework detailing the rollout of a common API gateway for banks and other financial institutions to exchange financial data.

Collaborate to win

Amidst the talk about open APIs and the open banking ecosystem, what tangible benefits does it bring for banks? Firstly, a more engaging experience to satisfy the notoriously short attention span of younger consumers.

With APIs instantly aggregating consumer data from different financial platforms, banks can verify the identity and financial history of their potential customer within seconds.

This allows for the pre-filling of registration forms, slashing the time needed to onboard a customer. Besides, banks can streamline their loan approval process and offer loans faster, without compromising on default rates.

This is a result of APIs being able to aggregate financial data from different platforms. With these data, banks are able to generate a comprehensive credit score for individual borrowers, allowing them to accurately determine their ability to repay.

Also Read: Open Banking: why this risky pursuit is the key to accelerating Fintech innovation

Increased revenue

Apart from offering a better experience for customers and lowering the default rates on loans, open APIs also pave the way for the creation of new products. Banks can leverage the increased knowledge of their customers to offer specific services as part of upselling or cross-selling efforts. 

For example, a customer who took out a property mortgage could be offered a property insurance plan at a competitive premium specific to his income and credit history.

This was possible because open APIs allowed the bank to verify their income and credit history across different platforms before generating a risk-adjusted premium.

On average, it takes several weeks for a personal loan to be fully processed by banks. In the same period of time, one can easily get approval for a loan at an alternative lending platform. This has forced banks to rethink how they approach the approval of loans.

Previously, they wasted valuable time and resources retrieving physical financial documents (such as past income statements) from customers and searching the web for their credit report.

However, with an open banking ecosystem, banks can easily access the necessary information through a shared API gateway, allowing them to approve loans within minutes. Amidst the numerous benefits open banking can provide for banks, what effect does it have on the bottom line?

A report by Accenture has found that banks that embrace open banking will profit from a potential revenue uplift of 20 per cent, whereas those failing to do so risk losing 30 per cent to disruptive industry players such as fintech companies by 2020.

Winners innovate

It is no secret fintech companies are revolutionising the future of financial services, providing easy-to-use and personalised products at a fraction of those offered by incumbents such as banks.

The enabler of their success? Open APIs built by open banking platforms such as Finantier, which work with the leading banks in Indonesia to provide custom-built APIs for them. By connecting them to the open banking ecosystem, we enable them to gain an edge over their competitors who still operate in silos.

Also Read: How startups can aid Southeast Asia’s Open Banking landscape

Banks and innovation do not typically complement each other. For these century-old institutions, the choice to adopt new technologies at the expense of legacy ones can be difficult due to the complexity of these decades-old infrastructures and the inertia they create.

However, it is no longer a choice. The mantra of “innovate or die” represents the harsh reality of the financial services sector today. Banks, like everyone else, will be forced to innovate.

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This post was originally published on Finantier’s blog.

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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