MAJECA-PIKOM-ASOCIO Webinar on Cybersecurity: “How Safe Are You Online?” held on 18th August 2021 via Microsoft Teams

The Malaysia-Japan Economic Association (MAJECA), in collaboration with the National Tech Association of Malaysia (PIKOM), the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (ASOCIO), in association with CyberSecurity Malaysia and the Malaysia South-South Association (MASSA) jointly organised a webinar on cybersecurity, titled “How Safe Are You Online?”, on 18th August 2021 over Microsoft Teams. 200 participants registered of which 130 logged on. The participants came from various business sectors, universities, organisations, and government agencies from Malaysia, Japan, Korea and from the developing countries (incl. Bangladesh, Bosnia, Chile, Guinea, Taiwan and Thailand).

More and more businesses of all sizes and sectors are embracing the ‘digitalisation imperative’ to remain competitive and resilient. In this current IR4.0 era and exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic, business systems, processes and data have to be constantly updated and to remain relevant.

The ongoing digital transformation, pivots on investments into the adoption of new technologies, processes and automation. The increasing integration of digitised data-driven services, while improving business resilience and function, has also exposed users to new areas of vulnerability.

This webinar addressed these vulnerabilities and featured experts, institutions and solution providers from across Japan, Korea and Malaysia to holistically inform and equip participants on aspects of cybersecurity from industry, practitioner and legal standpoints.

The programme for this webinar is as follows:

Mr Ong Kian Yew, Chief Executive Officer, National Tech Association of Malaysia (PIKOM) as the emcee of the webinar.

The webinar began with welcoming addresses from the leadership of MAJECA, PIKOM and ASOCIO after being introduced by the emcee.

Tan Sri Azman Hashim, President, Malaysia-Japan Economic Association (MAJECA) & Malaysia South-South Association (MASSA), delivering his welcome address.

Mr Danny Lee, Chairman of The National Tech Association of Malaysia (PIKOM), giving his welcome address.

Mr David Wong, Chairman of Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (ASOCIO), giving his welcome address.

Following that, a report on the collaborative venture of ASEAN – Japan Cybersecurity Project was delivered by the representatives of Japan IT Services Industry Association (JISA), in which they announced the launching of a new initiative called Cybersecurity Business Platform (CBP) that will help businesses in ASEAN region to overcome cybersecurity attacks.

Mr Takeshi Miyamoto, President of Japan IT Services Industry Association (JISA) delivering his greetings and introducing JISA and its activities.

Ms Ruy Hayashi, Japan IT Services Industry Association (JISA), the International Coordinator for ASEAN – Japan Cybersecurity Project introducing a new JISA intiative to support businesses titled ASEAN-CBP (ASEAN – Cybersecurity Business Platform) @ https://asean-cbp.org.

The discussion on the topic of the importance of cybersecurity and how having a cybersecurity strategy can ensure business continuity, was moderated by Dato’ Ts. Dr. Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab, CEO of CyberSecurity Malaysia. Joining alongside him was a distinguished panel comprising industry, practitioner and legal experts in the field of cybersecurity.

Dato’ Ts. Dr. Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab, CEO, CyberSecurity Malaysia, the session moderator.

The panelists were as follows:

Mr Alex Loh, Chairman of PIKOM Cybersecurity Chapter &Country Manager of Fortinet Malaysia Sdn Bhd.

Mr John Choi, Deputy Chairman of Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (ASOCIO) & Founder of MarkAny Inc.

Ms Janet Toh, Partner of M/S Shearn Delamore & Co.

Following the presentations by the speakers, the webinar proceeded into a panel discussion-cum-Q&A session led once more by Dato’ Ts. Dr. Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab. The panelists discussed the following:

The complexity of cyberthreats today that is becoming more intelligent, borderless and faceless engaging in malware and phishing tactics. As COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the push towards all things digital, there is a need to invest in cybersecurity solutions to manage our business digital infrastructures and to ringfence them against such crimes.

Mr Alex Loh highlighted the struggles of hiring cybersecurity professionals due to the lack of talents that specialize in this field. Hence, the need to develop these talents by providing training and education from university level. There are also opportunities for organisations to provide cybersecurity training and programmes to increase awareness among the general workforce. He also encouraged organisations to undertake cybersecurity assessments and invest in appropriate cybersecurity solutions.

Mr John Choi opined that existing cybersecurity solutions may not be enough to combat cyber threats that is increasingly becoming more intelligent and sophisticated with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Therefore, a multi-layered defense must be deployed. The first layer of prevention engaging traditional technology such as Firewalls can be augmented by a second layer e.g. data encryption. A third and emerging cybersecurity technology i.e. tracing technology, can now trace the source of the cyberattack. He also touched on the topic of ensuring data and privacy protection by using homomorphic encryption – a technology that allows us to perform statistical analysis over encrypted data on a larger scale.

Ms Janet Toh touched on the issue of cyberattacks becoming increasingly sophisticated and the rise of ransomware and phishing exploits through machine learning. The accelerated digitisation is caused by many organisations having to adapt to remote/hybrid work models due to the pandemic situation. Work-from-home employees have to rely on their own personal devices, removable storage devices, whilst some companies have started using cloud servers and had to quickly approve new software. This situation exposes organisations to data risks because work-from-home employees are all in different locations, operating from different networks, not working with the organization’s perimeter network on multiple devices. Ms Janet Toh’s slides can be accessed here.

The webinar brought to light the procedures for individuals or an organisation to follow when their digital identity and data e.g.: user ID, passwords, banking details – is hacked. The suggested procedures include, amongst others, shutting down the organisation’s network, perform forensic analysis to recover the data loss and investing in insurance. For individuals, the best step is to alert and warn close family members and friends regarding the threat and not to respond to any unusual requests on one’s devices.

Dato’ Ts. Dr Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab – highlighted the need for an improved regulatory framework, the importance of collaboration between the government and private sectors as well as academia. CyberSecurity Malaysia also provides a platform – MyCERT’s Cyber999 Help Centre – to report data breaches incidents whether it is individual or organisational issues.

Dato’ Ts. Dr Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab, the session moderator, wrapped up the webinar with the following closing remarks:

The need to conduct audits to understand the value of the data and information and data channels within each organisation, thereby enabling decision-makers to evaluate the optimal cybersecurity strategy to employ.
Cybersecurity solutions (especially at the enterprise-level) needs to develop a multi-layered defence and preventive system to defend against the borderless cyber threats that is evolving to be more accessible, intelligent and creative.
The importance of facilitating and investing in cybersecurity from a holistic standpoint to increase awareness among the general workforce at the people-level; at the process-level, instituting sound cybersecurity policies and frameworks; and at the technology-level recognising that cyber criminals are evolving with the advent of more IR4.0 technologies such as AI, video-cloning etc. Therefore, it is important to keep abreast with new cybersecurity technologies and infrastructures that are interdisciplinary and adaptive.

The following is a gallery of photos taken by the MAJECA Secretariat at the webinar:

Tan Sri Azman Hashim, President, MAJECA delivering his welcome address.
From top-left, clockwise: Ms Janet Toh, Dato’ Ts. Dr Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab, Mr John Choi and Mr Alex Loh during panel discussion
Mr Masayuki Osuka, another representative from JISA, also joined the Q&A session.