Asian companies are in biggest danger of cyber attacks

Attackers are advancing zero day exploits into ‘zero-day-plus-one’ attacks at record speed, warns a new report from Nexusguard. Attacks are outpacing even those IT teams working at their most efficient pace, and teams could not possibly be expected to keep up with the rate of attack.

Add to this the falling cost of botnet-for-hire schemes that threaten to attack unsuspecting businesses for as little as twenty-dollars per attack and teams are overwhelmed in their efforts to stay ahead of swiftly evolving threats.

“The Asia Pacific region not only produces the most amount of DDoS scans to the Internet, but is also the biggest target of DDoS attacks than anywhere else in the world,” says Terrence Gareau, Chief Scientist at Nexusguard. “With the highest rate of software piracy globally, it should come as no surprise that the large botnets are able to operate freely in this region simply because there are so many vulnerable systems.”

Industry and analyst research reviewed in the latest Cybersecurity Asia Pacific report sponsored by Nexusguard point further to the serious cybersecurity threat that companies in the region are facing.

The report notes that organizations in the Asia-Pacific region were forecast to spend $230 billion to deal with cybersecurity breaches in 2014 — the highest amount for any region in the world, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) and the National University of Singapore survey, as reported in Marsh’s “Cybercrime in Asia” 2014 report.

The Asia Pacific Cyber Security Market contributes 17.21 percent of the global market and will grow to 21.16 percent by 2019, according to MicroMarketMonitor.

The private sector – highly developed, economically lucrative, and a prime target for the theft of intellectual property, blackmail, phishing, and identity theft – is investing in cybersecurity in nations such as China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore”, according to ABI Research.

Research and Markets states that demand for cloud-based security solutions is one  key trend emerging in the cybersecurity market. End-users prefer cloud-based  security solutions because they are cost-effective and can be easily managed. Therefore, both large enterprises and SMEs in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly adopting cloud-based cyber security solutions.

According to the Asia Cloud Computing Association, China leads Asia-Pacific nations with a total addressable cloud computing market totaling $141.9 billion. Japan is the number two nation in the region at $101.4 billion. Indonesia is number three at $76.8 billion.

More importantly, Gartner predicts that by 2018, more than half of organisations will use security services firms that specialize in data protection, security risk management and security infrastructure management to enhance their security postures. The expected increase in spending to deal with cybersecurity threats and the lack of preparedness of Asian companies thus represents an opportunity for global firms and regional or local service providers to invest in the right partnerships and technologies to beef up their security offerings.

“Cyber threats including DDoS attacks are a serious meance facing CIOs and their teams, and extending across the organization, especially with the growing integration of personal mobile devices into the corporate network, and increasing mobility of the workforce spread across multiple locations, with all of these disparate areas linked through the cloud,” said Jolene Lee, CEO, Nexusguard.

“Combined with the rate and speed of cyber-attacks and the increasing intelligence behind them, companies outsourcing their cybersecurity needs would be well advised to consider not just innovative technology and global reach, but also the depth of experience and expertise in predicting and mitigating threats.”

Four key areas of security solutions Singapore companies need to invest in

Singapore is one of the most well developed security markets in Asia/Pacific, and in the age of advanced attacks, organizations need to invest in four key areas of security solutions, according to Gartner, Inc. These four key areas of security solutions include: preventive, detective, retrospective and predictive.

“The key to achieving a strong security posture is to have these four types of security capabilities work well as an integrated, continuously monitored solution, something Gartner refers to as the adaptive security architecture,” said Sid Deshpande, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Organizations in Singapore display a heightened sense of urgency today towards improving their security posture, driven by the following factors:

• Strong efforts by government and regulatory bodies to increase security awareness and drive investment in security innovation
• The new types of risks associated with digital business models
• Highly visible security incidents in 2013 and 2014
• Overall IT spending growth

Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25 percent of corporate data traffic will flow directly from mobile devices to the cloud.

As the majority of consumer facing businesses in Singapore go digital, organizations are looking at investing in mobile and cloud security solutions that can help them mitigate risks associated with digital business.

The high interest areas around security from organizations in Singapore include security monitoring, identity and access management, advanced threat prevention, IoT security, application security, cloud security and GRC, among others.

“2013 and 2014 have seen a slew of merger and acquisition activity in the security space globally, and the increasingly complex nature of threats is driving security providers to fundamentally change the way they address their customers’ security challenges and communicate their message effectively. The renewed security opportunity presented to providers by Singapore enterprises brings with it sales and marketing challenges for security providers,” said Deshpande.