Cyber Crime & Forensic Press Release Threat Detection & Defense

82% of Organisations Predict Successful Cyber Attacks in APAC, Despite Declining Cyber Risk

CSA Editorial July 10, 2023

3 minutes read

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity leader, revealed that cyber risk levels in Asia Pacific (APAC) have improved from the first half to the second half of 2022, according to its latest survey on cyber risk. Nevertheless, organisations remain pessimistic about the threat landscape, with 82% anticipating successful attacks this year.

The findings come from Trend Micro’s biannual Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, which measures the gap between respondents’ cybersecurity preparedness versus their likelihood of being attacked. In the second half of 2022, the CRI surveyed more than 3,700 CISOs, IT practitioners, and managers across North America, Europe, Latin/South America, and APAC.

In APAC, enhanced cyber preparedness is a key driver of improved cyber risk levels—which has shifted from “elevated” to “moderate”. However, organisations cannot rest on their laurels with the prospect of threats looming.

The threats that APAC organisations are most worried about this year are as follows:

Three in four organisations cited that it was “somewhat to very likely” that they would suffer a breach of customer data (74%), intellectual property (74%) or a successful cyberattack (82%).
These figures represent declines of just 2%, 4% and 7% respectively, from the results of the CRI in the first half of 2022.

Nilesh Jain, Vice President, Southeast Asia & India, Trend Micro: “We’ve seen a drastic improvement in the APAC cyber risk index since the first half of 2022, with figures moving into positive territory at 0.05 from negative levels. This is a promising result as it means that organisations have greatly stepped up to improve their cyber preparedness. It is crucial for organisations to continue this momentum by focusing on the threats that matter most to their business this year. The first step is to gain complete and continuous attack surface visibility and control.”

“To address new complexities arising from an expanding attack surface, security teams need to bolster their capabilities in proactive attack surface risk management. On top of architecture improvements for enhanced interoperability, scalability and agility, having a unified cybersecurity platform with extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities is also critical in enhancing security teams’ visibility and response to cyberthreats across internal and external systems, accounts and devices. This would give organisations a leg-up in understanding, communicating, and mitigating expected risks.”

Singapore’s cyber risk declines

The trend in Singapore echoes that of the region, with a reported decline in cyber risk and improvement in cyber preparedness since the first half of 2022.

Table 1: Cyber Risk in APAC & Singapore
Time frame	Cyber Risk Index & Risk Label		Business Implications (Moderate Risk)
	APAC	Singapore
First half of 2022	-0.11 Elevated risk	0.03 Moderate risk	· Some likelihood of a compromise · Good ability to detect new threats · Good visibility of threats within network · Good incident response process
Second half of 2022	0.05 Moderate risk	0.25 Moderate risk

However, local organisations remain on guard, with 88% citing it was “somewhat to very likely” that they will experience a successful cyberattack in the next 12 months.

Nevertheless, Singapore organisations are more confident about their abilities to prevent data breaches than before; less than two-thirds believe that they are “somewhat to very likely” to experience a breach of customer data (66%) or intellectual property (53%).

Expected cyber threats in Singapore and APAC this year

Organisations in Singapore and APAC cited business email compromise (BEC) and clickjacking among the top five cyber threats that they expect to experience this year.

Table 2: Top 5 Expected Cyber Threats
APAC	Singapore
Business Email Compromise (BEC) Ransomware Clickjacking Botnets Crypto-mining	Clickjacking Web scrapping Business Email Compromise (BEC) Fileless attack Man-in-the-middle attack

Current infrastructure security risks of organisations in Singapore and APAC

In APAC and Singapore, the primary risks are people related. APAC respondents named employees as representing three of their top five infrastructure risks. In Singapore, lack of qualified personnel and employees comprised two of their top five infrastructure risks.

Table 3: Top 5 Current Security Risks in Infrastructure
APAC	Singapore
Negligent insiders Cloud computing infrastructure and providers Shortage of qualified personnel Mobile/remote employees Organisational misalignment and complexity	Shortage of qualified personnel Cloud computing and infrastructure Mobile or remote employees Virtual computing environments (servers, endpoints) Lack of system connectivity or visibility

David Ng, Country Manager, Singapore, Trend Micro, said: “Hybrid work has become the norm in Singapore—Trend Micro’s recent Risky Rewards study revealed that 77% of Singapore businesses believe that offering the ability to work from anywhere has become vital in the war for talent. At the same time 78% believe there is a strong connection between cybersecurity and overall business risk. Local organisations thus need to master a balancing act between offering employees flexibility and minimising both the security and business risks that arise. Armed with the insights provided by the CRI, CISOs and CIOs in Singapore can now better evaluate not only the technology solutions, but its people and processes to help mitigate cyber risks across the enterprise.”

To read a full copy of the Trend Micro CRI 2H 2022, please visit: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/security-intelligence/breaking-news/cyber-risk-index