Mr Lui Tuck Yew: The Singapore Government is investing heavily to secure critical systems that support key public services.

Singapore’s inaugural Cyber Security Awareness Day on 13 April 2011 got off to a good start, garnering more than 300,000 pledges from the people, public and private sectors, each pledging to change their passwords to stronger ones.

Passwords are generally the first line of defence against cyber criminals who use social networking to gain access to sensitive corporate and personal information. The pledges to strengthen their passwords were made by users representing all walks of life, ranging from students, homemakers to staff from the private and public sectors.

Championed by the Cyber Security Awareness Alliance, this year’s Cyber Security Awareness Day took place alongside the annual Information Security Seminar. Speaking at the event, Mr Lui Tuck Yew,  then Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, said the Singapore Government is investing heavily to secure critical systems that support key public services.

He noted that the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) had recently signed two collaborative agreements with its counterpart agencies in Japan and the Republic of Korea. “Such agreements will enable our countries to share early and pertinent information about cyber threats, undertake joint development and training in enhancing technical capabilities as well as enhance the security of respective national infrastructure,” added Mr Lui.

Besides these formal agreements, Ms Christina Gan, then Senior Director, Infocomm Security & Assurance Division, IDA, pointed out that Singapore has established informal bilateral partnerships with other countries such as the United States, whereby public agencies from both sides can approach each other easily through email or phone calls.    These are part of the Government’s efforts to develop the nation’s infocomm security capabilities and to enhance cyber security situational awareness.

The inaugural Cyber Security Awareness Day took place alongside this year's Information Security Seminar.

IDA has also conducted a mid-term review of the Infocomm Security Masterplan 2 (MP2), to ensure that the Masterplan stays relevant and capable of addressing the evolving cyber security threat landscape. The review identified several areas of need – first, to develop an overarching national level view of the state of security across critical economic sectors, to attain enhanced situational awareness of cyber threats. Second, to build capabilities through partnerships with local universities or setting up advanced research programmes, so as to provide a pipeline of highly-trained security professionals and practitioners. There should also be capacity building of all personnel in the area of infocomm security, for better informed decision-making. Last but not least, to focus on enhancing information sharing between organisations.

To further safeguard Singapore’s position as a secure and trusted hub and as part of MP2’s initiatives, IDA has also issued a Code of Practice in February this year to designated Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This makes it mandatory for ISPs to put in place the right processes and develop new capabilities to manage current and emerging cyber threats.

“With this Code, the ISPs are required to share their experiences on how they identify and respond to threats and vulnerabilities and to adapt their defences accordingly. They are also required to notify each other when their networks come under attack,” Ms Gan explained.