The report is brought by Horangi Cyber Security from Singapore, these are the state of cybersecurity in Southeast Asia

As the third largest internet market, Southeast Asia leads in its e-commerce sector, as told by a report issued by Horangi Cyber Security. In its cybersecurity outlook, Horangi stated that 90 per cent of users in Southeast Asia has internet access via mobile, led by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

 

With 90 million users to date and a market worth of US$ 72 billion last year, internet users in the region are estimated to reach 350 million users.

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A dominant share is held by online travel business as it totaled 41.7 per cent of the internet economy, as recorded by Google & Temasek e-Conomy SEA 2018. Singapore and Vietnam emerged on top as the countries with GDP-contributing internet economy.

Given the overall statistics, Horangi concluded in its findings that cost of cybercrime is increasing as it is persistent, and Asia is a lucrative target even with the lagging of cybersecurity maturity in the region because of low awareness and historical exposure.

Horangi further noted the breaches in cybersecurity for the past year, ranging from Equifax in late 2017 that affected 1.43 million of its consumers, to Marriot hotel’s data leakages that’s been going on for four years undetected.

Number one type of attacks plaguing the region turned out to be a crypto-related one, with crypto exchange accounts being hacked, accounted for 369 per cent in 2017. This reflects the weak information security the region still has that doesn’t meet the interest in the sector halfway.

Other big attacks were malware for 275 per cent, as there’s an increase in encrypted attacks. In Singapore alone, 42 per cent of the country’s business has reported phishing incidents.

Horangi detailed on why Asia is vulnerable to cyber attack, which is caused by the longer overall time it takes to identify a breach, easier entry, and the lack of cybersecurity experts in the region. Even with the data showing that Asia is, in fact, the fastest growing region for security-related hardware, software, and services since 2015, the total spending on security alone was to hit over US$12 billion last year.

Horangi Cyber Security is led by CEO and founder Paul Hadjy, focussing on creating software that solves cybersecurity problems in Asia. It provides clients with actionable data to make critical cyber decisions.

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In 2016, Grab selected Hadjy as their Head of IT to shape the company’s internal technology, information security, and business process architecture.
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