Bjorn Engelhardt, vice president, SaaS Group, Asia Pacific and Japan geography, Symantec Corp.
SINGAPORE, 23 SEPTEMBER 2009 - Asian enterprises are among the most vulnerable in the world to digital attacks and cybercrime, due to an overall complacency about web and email security.
There remains a reluctance in Asian countries to adopt software-as-a-service (SaaS) approaches to combat digital crime, while the SaaS strategy is much more accepted in Australia, the US and Europe.
These thoughts come from MessageLabs, a major provider of integrated messaging and web security services that is expanding its presence in the Asia Pacific.
MessageLabs, now part of Symantec, sees about nine billion emails from 20,000 customers every day and makes a guarantee to stop all known, and unknown, viruses.
Speaking in Singapore, Bjorn Engelhardt, vice president, SaaS Group, Asia Pacific and Japan geography, Symantec Corp., said that in the Lion City alone, more than 90 per cent of emails are spam. Last month one in 196 emails in Singapore had viruses or malware included in them – a phenomenal rate which has increased over the past 12 months.
Organised crime
Engelhardt said that organized crime is what is driving spam today and cybercrime was now worth more to them than the drugs trade.
“The goal of an email spam or malware now is to get into your organization, establish a footprint, understand what sensitive information is available and then pull that out,” Engelhardt said. “The risk is pretty broad but it’s all about stealing information out of an prganization.”
Engelhardt said that most enterprises are unprepared for what has been the recent explosion of cyber-attacks and are also often not aware of the risks that lie within their own business.
“There’s a lack of understanding about what information is important to an organization and what level of threats actually exist within,” he said. “When we start servicing our customers we scan both in-bound and outbound emails and many are very surprised to see the number of their out-going emails that actually include viruses and malware – there are lots of threats existing within organisations too.
“From outside there hasn’t been an abatement or decrease in spam at all; there’s been a continual increase, along with phishing and malware, and it’s becoming more prominent on a monthly basis.”
Engelhardt said that the take up of SaaS and hosted mail security ewas now growing about 35 per cent each year, while demand for typical software appliances was “growing sub 10 per cent”.
Asia more complacent
MessageLabs senior director Marketing APJ, Andrew Antal, said that Asia enterprises seem more complacent and accepting of spam and viruses, compared to their counterparts in other regions.
“Enterprises in the US and Europe simply do not tolerate cyber attacks,” Antal said. “I would expect that over the next two to three years, the markets in Asia will take on a higher level of security and not accept spam nor viruses coming in to their organization.
“Asia’s increased vulnerability probably relates to the size of the IT departments and their ability to actually focus on security. My feeling is that Singapore is probably 12 – 24 months behind in terms of SaaS adoption.
“Other English-speaking markets, like Hong Kong and India, are actually ahead of the curve.”
Antal said that organisations should be looking at “a layered approach to security” and have “defense in depth” for their business.
“There will always be cases where you need desktop security,” he said. “The threats through USB sticks and email viruses are not going to disappear. Enterprises need to have security and technology at the internet level, at the server level and at the gateway level. Having these three integrated ensures that enterprises have ‘a higher Chinese wall’ to ensure that threats do not enter the organization.”
