Commentary from Darktrace on MINDEF breach

In response to the news on the MINDEF breach in Singapore, Sanjay Aurora, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Darktrace, has shared his views on how this breach might have happened and how it can be prevented moving forward.

Darktrace, a world-leading cyber-threat defence company with regional headquarters in Singapore and operations in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Korea and New Zealand, has pioneered the Enterprise Immune System – a new approach to cyber defence. Its Enterprise Immune System technology automatically detects and responds to emerging threats, powered by machine learning and mathematics developed by specialists from the University of Cambridge. Without using rules or signatures, Darktrace models the ‘pattern of life’ of every device, user and network within an organisation, identifying and mitigating cyber-threats before damage is done. Darktrace’s self-learning technology has been deployed globally and across all sectors, including energy, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, financial services and healthcare.

Attributed to Sanjay Aurora, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Darktrace

“MINDEF has rightly acknowledged that governments are an attractive target for stealthy cyber-attackers. New forms of attack are inconspicuous, dwelling in networks for weeks, or even months, moving laterally to find the ‘crown jewels,’ before sounding any alarms. This latest breach heralds the new era of ‘trust attacks,’ which aim to erode faith in the integrity of our data, and the public institutions who host it.

Ultimately, everyone is a target and attackers will get in. The important question is: how can we stop the threat already inside the network, before it escalates into a crisis?

This latest high-profile breach will further ramp up the pressure for Singaporean organisations to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to automatically detect and respond to these inevitable threats, before data can be stolen or changed. Although it appears that MINDEF has responded swiftly to this incident, the reality is that no human can keep up in this rapidly-evolving threat landscape. It is a cyber arms race and AI technology that self-learns what is ‘normal’ for a network and automatically identifies and takes action against abnormal behaviour and genuine threats will be instrumental in safeguarding critical information and infrastructure.”