While well-recognised as a defence player, the group notes that it has 25 years of experience in the cyber business.
“It [the summit] reflects our commitment to advancing the cybersecurity agenda by sharing insights, shaping strategy and showcasing solutions that secure what matters most to businesses and critical sectors,” says Goh Eng Choon, ST Engineering president of Cyber, at the opening ceremony.
Also present at the summit was senior minister for Digital Development and Information, Tan Kiat How, who highlighted the importance of organisations staying prepared for cyber attacks and breaches.
“In the Singapore Cybersecurity health report, more than eight in 10 Singapore organisations had experienced a cybersecurity incident in 2023. Of which 99% reported suffering business impacts, with the top three being - business disruption, data loss, and reputational damage,” notes Tan.
He adds: “Threat actors are moving faster, using AI, automation, and increasingly sophisticated methods to exploit vulnerabilities — often much faster than organisations can patch them.”
Earlier in April this year, the data of some 8,200 customers of DBS was “potentially compromised” following a ransomware attack on Toppan Next Tech (TNT), which was contracted by the bank to print customer statements.
Also affected was Bank of China's Singapore branch, which left around 3,000 customers similarly affected.
See also: Olam Group closes digital farmer services platform Jiva AG, over 600 employees affected
The senior minister notes that SMEs also have to stay vigilant, highlghting that some businesses hold the view of being “too small” or “too unimportant” to be targeted.
“Sometimes, small companies may end up as unintended collateral damage as malware and other malicious codes may find their way into a firm’s digital system even if they are not the targets. And when one firm is compromised, the impact may cascade through the broader industry sector — potentially disrupting services, leaking data, and even compromising national infrastructure.” says Tan.
Enter AETHER
With this, ST Engineering’s AETHER service is aimed at providing businesses in the space with cybersecurity.
AETHER works in three stages to provide SMEs what the group calls “comprehensive protection”.
Firstly, after installation on endpoint devices such as laptops and servers, a baseline scan through data is provided to identify potential vulnerabilities for a “one-time” health report.
Cybersecurity product solution manager Stanely Lim, who helped launch AETHER, says this stage, despite being early, already provides SMEs with “many insights”, as applications are separated into three classifications; legitimate, privileged and malicious.
To stay ahead of Singapore and the region’s corporate and economic trends, click here for Latest Section
Legitimate applications are harmless to devices and organisations, while privileged applications should be limited to certain specific use cases to reduce risk-exposure.
Finally, malicious applications, as per its namesake, are recognised as potentially-damaging to an organisation's digital infrastructure.
“For small customers who don't have a lot of tight controls on their machines, stage one actually highlights a lot of applications that they didn't even know existed in their environment,” says Lim.
For AETHER’s second stage, the programme provides real-time 24/7 monitoring of threats, summarising all incidents into a monthly report while providing live support and investigation via a cyber analyst during office hours on high-severity incidents.
Lim says: “This stage essentially outlines the trap, the details and the remediation measures, including what they [customers] should do to mitigate this happening again.”
Finally, the third stage of AETHER helps orgainsations to stay ahead and prepared for oncoming threats.
This is done through security controls, incident response planning and most importantly, what ST Engineering coins a cyber response strategy.
“We can send you [organisations] the report, for example, but if you don't have the capability or the framework or in place to do that mitigation, you're still going to be lost. So here, what we try to do is send you templates, processes, frameworks and playbooks so that the SME can easily take on and adapt their approach to their environment,” explains Lim.
AETHER has also been made affordable for SMEs in mind, at just $100 per endpoint annually.
ST Engineering says that the service builds on the SME CyberResilience programme jointly launched with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) back in May to help SMEs enhance "cyber resilience" and cybersecurity.
The programme already entailed a one-time complimentary cyber threat scanning service for ten endpoints, up to 2,000 SMEs, as well as cybersecurity events to spread awareness and educate SMEs on threats in the digital landscape.
As at 4.18 pm, shares in ST Engineering are trading five cents higher or 0.63% up at $7.95.
