Singapore invests in Kaspersky Lab’s new cybersecurity research

06 October 2017

Launched
in November 2016, Singapore’s National Cybersecurity R&D Programme Grant
Call highlighted the potential for translational and deployability of
cybersecurity ideas and technologies. It identified three priority areas,
namely; national security, critical infrastructure and smart nation. The grant
call particularly eyed research projects that examine key technology areas
including effective threat-based detection, analysis and defense, secure IoT
system, and security-by-design and testing of emergent technologies.

Out of 23
proposals received, only nine were selected based on their significance to
create impact in Singapore and possible practical application in the public’s
daily lives.

Kaspersky
Lab worked with the NUS to develop its research project titled, “Malware
Source Attribution through Multi-Dimensional Code Feature Analysis” to
create automated solutions that will help malware analysts and security
response teams understand the similarities in malware used across cyber attacks
more efficiently and pinpoint the attackers quickly.

The
current practice among cybersecurity professionals is to rely on the history of
malware attacks to establish the possible origins of threat actors.
Cybersecurity experts normally collect evidence after cyberattacks, likening
APT research to paleontology where malware analysts dig up and gather malware
artefacts, map and analyse attacks and follow the trail of the hackers to
uncover and figure it out.

“We
decided to join this opportunity kindly provided by the NRF as it opens a new
page in Kaspersky Lab’s research efforts in Asia. We hope that the new
technology developed together with NUS will help improve the speed of our
research when it comes to code attribution. We would like to have practical
solutions in the end that will be applicable and beneficial not only to us but
to all interested Singapore agencies,” said Vitaly Kamluk, Director of
Global Research & Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab APAC.

Singapore
is one of the countries in Asia Pacific that Kaspersky Lab has been working
with very closely on cybersecurity. In 2015, Eugene Kaspersky was appointed as
member of the International Advisory Panel for Singapore’s National
Cybersecurity R&D Programme, the same year Kaspersky Lab opened its APAC headquarters
in Singapore. One of the established efforts between Kaspersky Lab and
Singapore is the skills development program through the Economic Development
Board of Singapore (EDB) where highly-skilled students are given the
opportunity to train at the cybersecurity’s headquarters in Moscow as junior
malware analysts. Out of the five students sent to the one-year cybersecurity
training, one of them is currently working with Kaspersky Lab, two with the
Singapore Cybersecurity Agency and two of them are working for a private
companies in Singapore.

We are
excited to be in collaboration with the National University of Singapore, a
leader in education, in creating an automated malware solution source. The
initiative by the National Cybersecurity R&D Programme to support new ideas
and cybersecurity technologies is highly encouraging and having an inclusive
ecosystem to support cyber threats is definitely another step in the right
direction,” says
Stephan Neumeier, managing director of Kaspersky Lab Asia Pacific.