The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre and the Monetary Authority of Singapore will collaborate to encourage the regional sharing of Cybersecurity information.
Financial regulatory authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is working in conjunction with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (FS-ISAC) and launching the Asia-Pacific Regional Intelligence and Analysis Centre which is expected to commence operations in early 2017.
The centre will employ local analysts to track and monitor cyber threats to major financial centres in Singapore, with the aim of strengthening the country’s Cybersecurity ecosystem and building advanced cyber intelligence practices.
In addition to the centre, the FS-ISAC would be increasing efforts to host Cybersecurity events and training days for the wider Asia-Pacific finance industry, including the FS-ISAC APAC summit, to be held in Singapore next April.
FS-ISAC chief executive, Bill Nelsen, said the continued growth of technology would also spur further innovation in the hacking and security fields, meaning protection against Cybersecurity needed to be rigorous and advanced to ensure cyber safety for consumers and customers.
Nelsen said threats which targeted the financial sector specifically included account takeovers, business email compromises, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and destructive malware.
“Cyber attacks continue to increase globally and can move around the world instantaneously. The availability of reliable, timely and actionable information and threat intelligence is critical to the security and resilience of the global financial sector,” Nelsen said.
“[We are] providing member firms in the region with the means to collect, analyse and mitigate risks through an industry collective threat intelligence analysis and sharing platform.
“This initiative enables financial firms both in the region as well as globally to develop an even stronger community defence model and will be an important resource to deliver deeper analysis, mitigate risks and encourage greater collaboration.”
MAS chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty, said that cyber resilience remained a key focus for the regulatory body moving into the New Year, with stronger precautions to be taken to ensure minimal damage to systems and strong protection of customer information and data.
Mohanty said that dedicated collaboration between the major players in Singapore’s financial services sector would help mitigate risks and increase contingency measures.
“In view of the increasing interconnectedness of financial services sector, sharing of timely and actionable cyber information between financial institutions is essential in building collective cyber resilience within the financial ecosystem,” he said.
“The establishment of FS-ISAC APAC Intelligence Centre will help to bolster the quality and timeliness of cyber threat intelligence received by financial institutions, strengthen cyber security risk management and response, as well as champion Cybersecurity programmes and initiatives in the APAC region.”
