Industry-Wide Cross Border Cyber Intelligence Sharing Mitigated Impact

 

SINGAPORE – Media Outreach – 10 February 2021 – FS-ISAC,
the only global cyber intelligence sharing community solely focused on
financial services, announced today that last year, more than 100 financial
services firms were targets of a wave of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
extortion attacks conducted by the same threat actor. The criminals sent
extortion notes threatening to disrupt the firms’ websites and digital
services. The threat actor methodically moved across jurisdictions in Europe,
North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, hitting dozens of institutions
within weeks. They targeted the full gamut of financial services companies:
banks, fintechs, exchanges, card issuers, payments companies, insurance
companies, credit bureaus, asset managers, money transfer companies, and
payroll companies. 

 

DDoS Attacks by Sub-Vertical
Retail Banking	41%
Exchange	15%
Payments	13%
Securities & Investments	10%
Insurance	7%
Critical Utility	3%
Credit Reporting Agency and Ratings	2%
Core Back Office Supplier	1%

 

DDoS Attacks by Region
North America (Us, Canada)	43%
Europe, UK, Middle East & Africa	38%
Asia	15%
Latin America	3%

 

FS-ISAC credits its members’ willingness to share cyber
intelligence with mitigating the impact and threat for the financial services
industry. Members were able to keep up with the rapid pace of attacks using the
FS-ISAC Intelligence Exchange’s secure chat and intelligence sharing
capabilities, which enables industry collaboration and discussion in real
time. 

To increase industry-wide cross-border cyber intelligence
sharing, FS-ISAC launched the Global
Leaders award program.
This is a company effort to elevate the profiles of members in the
financial services community who actively share cyber intelligence and best
practices across borders. 

“Today’s cyber criminals know no borders. An attack on a
bank in Asia could be a harbinger for an attack on an insurance company in the
US, a stock exchange in Latin America, or a fintech in Europe,” said Teresa Walsh, Global Head of Intelligence
at FS-ISAC. “This wave of attacks has shown how critical global cyber
intelligence sharing is. Members sharing specific details of attacks enable
other members to prepare and defend against them, lowering the return on
investment for threat actors. Our Global Leaders program builds on these
network effects by elevating those who share to benefit the entire community.”

The attacks have slowed but the recent boom in
cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, which cyber criminals use to demand payment,
could incentivize other attacks.

“In 2021, we have already seen new cyber threats in the form
of supply chain attacks, which we can expect to proliferate and evolve quickly.
The only way to stay ahead of these ever more sophisticated threat actors is to
collaborate,” said Jerry Perullo, CISO
at ICE/NYSE and FS-ISAC Chairman of the Board. “Now more than ever, we need
Global Leaders to model what effective sharing looks like to the rest of our
community as well as the industry at large.”

To learn more about the Global Leaders program visit fsisac.com/globalleaders.

About FS-ISAC

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) is the only global cyber intelligence sharing community solely focused on financial services. Serving financial institutions and in turn their customers, the organization leverages its intelligence platform, resiliency resources, and a trusted peer-to-peer network of experts to anticipate, mitigate and respond to cyber threats. Headquartered in the United States, the organization has offices in the United Kingdom and Singapore, and members in more than 70 countries. To learn more, visit www.fsisac.com.

SINGAPORE – Media Outreach – 10 February 2021 – The benefits of automation in Managed
Services are well understood, but the diverse requirements of end-clients have
meant that manual operations were still the norm. The complexity in
implementing automation is increased with the hybrid workload (servers spread
across the Big-3 cloud providers Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform,
Microsoft Azure) and hence most providers were forced to rely on manual
operations.

 

This changes with InfraGuard.io which is
bringing in an era of Platform-backed Managed Services with in-built automation
and self-governance features. Singapore-based Cloud Comrade is one of the first
partners to adopt this new way of working.

 

InfraGuard’s CEO, Deepak Sharma said,
“InfraGuard is built by converging our decade-long experience in Cloud Managed
Services into a single product. Imagine a server management solution that works
seamlessly across all Cloud Providers & Data Centres and supports all
flavours of Windows & UNIX Operating Systems. One that brings central access
policies, automation and scalability right from Day 1 and is backed by
world-class support. Too good to be true? Well, it is a reality now. InfraGuard
is today being used by some of the world’s largest Public Cloud MSPs.”

 

Cloud Comrade, one
of the fastest-growing managed service providers (MSPs) in Southeast Asia, has
been the first partner to adopt InfraGuard as the platform of choice to deliver
automated Managed Services to all its clients.

 

Andy Waroma, Co-Managing Director &
Co-Founder of Cloud Comrade, commented, “Cloud Comrade is constantly enhancing
and expanding our product offerings and capabilities to deliver new value to
our customers. We are excited to partner InfraGuard to bring a unique automated
cloud server management solution to our customers. InfraGuard’s automated
features with stringent compliance and audit monitoring standards minimise
common maintenance and security pitfalls and enable us to create a uniform
server management environment that is highly scalable and secure.”

 

The core features
of InfraGuard reside in three major segments of Access Management, Patch
Management and SOP Automation with value add-ons such as Encrypted Key Vault,
Script Repository and Security Lockdown among others. InfraGuard also comes
with an Open API and ready integrations with many third-party software.

 

With InfraGuard,
apart from enhanced efficiency, Cloud Comrade can also create Centres of
Excellence for each service scope, ensuring that the end-clients are always
benefiting from industry-standard governance and operation frameworks.

About InfraGuard

InfraGuard is global server management software with offices in Singapore, Australia, UK and India. Both, as a standalone solution and in conjunction with its MSP partners, InfraGuard provides automation and functionality across Access Management, Patch Management & SOP Automation. To know more visit: infraguard.io

About Cloud Comrade

Cloud Comrade is a Singapore-based cloud computing consultancy company with a presence also in Indonesia and Malaysia. The company offers a comprehensive range of services from strategy and design to deployment, migration, and management of customers’ IT infrastructure. It has implemented hundreds of cloud projects with over 400 customers around the ASEAN region. Cloud Comrade partners with the best solution providers in the field of cloud computing and holds top-tier certifications with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. In January 2019, ST Telemedia (sttelemedia.com), an active strategic investor specialising in communications & media, data centers, and infrastructure technology businesses, acquired a majority stake in the company. More information on Cloud Comrade can be found at cloudcomrade.com.

China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia among leaders in global logistics ranking

 

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 10 February
2021 – Asia-Pacific
nations lead all emerging market regions with China, India and Indonesia being
the world’s top emerging markets in the 12^th annual Agility Emerging
Markets Logistics Index, a broad gauge of competitiveness based on logistics
strength and business fundamentals.

The Index
ranks 50 countries by factors that make them attractive to logistics providers,
freight forwarders, shipping lines, air cargo carriers and distributors. Among
ASEAN countries, Vietnam climbs three spots to No. 8 overall. Indonesia (3),
Malaysia (5), Thailand (11) are strong; the Philippines rises one spot to No.
21.

China and
Vietnam were virtually alone in the world in 2020, posting positive GDP growth
for the year after being hit early by economic fallout from the COVID-19
pandemic.

Early 2020
supply disruptions in China prompted some to question whether it would
experience an exodus of manufacturing by multi-nationals seeking to diversify
sourcing and production. But the 1,200 logistics industry executives surveyed
for Agility’s Index indicate little desire to uproot from China or other
markets, preferring by a two-to-one margin to protect their supply chains by
accelerating adoption of digital tools and technology (41.3%) as opposed to
pursuing multi-shoring, near-shoring or reshoring strategies (21.9%).

Of those
who would consider moving out of China, more respondents chose Vietnam as a
preferred production hub than any other country (19.6%). Other Asian markets —
India (17.4%), Indonesia (12.4%), Thailand (10.3%) and Malaysia — are the next
leading choices. Only 7.8% of industry executives say relocating production
from China would mean reshoring to their home countries.

Asia-Pacific
is the region that more respondents believe will recover from the global
pandemic by the end of 2021. Of those surveyed, 55.9% predict an Asia-Pacific
economic recovery in 2021; 53.1% believe Europe will rebound.

“Asia Pacific experienced great turmoil in the
beginning of 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis, but it has rebounded strongly,
led by the powerful performance of China and Vietnam. The region is on track
for a full recovery this year,” says Andy Vargoczky, SVP of Sales &
Marketing Asia-Pacific, Agility GIL. “India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and
Vietnam continue to improve their supply chain infrastructure and capabilities,
showing why they are leaders in domestic and international logistics.”

 

Across 50 countries, China, India and Indonesia
rank highest in the Index for domestic logistics. China, India and Mexico are
on top for international logistics with Vietnam 4^th, Indonesia 5^th,
and Malaysia 7^th. UAE, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia have the best
business fundamentals.

Transport Intelligence (Ti), a leading analysis
and research firm for the logistics industry, compiled the Index.

John Manners-Bell, Chief
Executive of Ti, says: “The strength of the Agility Emerging Markets Logistics
Index has always been to differentiate between those emerging markets which
demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity and those which are more
fragile. This year is no exception. Although some — especially China and
Vietnam — have been able to rebalance around domestic industrial and consumer
demand, the majority are still highly dependent on international markets and
investment. As the COVID crisis finally unwinds over the next two years, those
most resilient will bounce back the fastest. Inevitably, those which have
failed to embrace market, trade, governmental and social reforms will be
hardest hit by the fallout from the pandemic.”

 

2021 Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index:  www.agility.com/2021index

 

Infographic | Video

About Agility

Agility is a global logistics company with $5.2 billion in annual revenue and 23,000+ employees in more than 100 countries. It is one of the world’s top freight forwarding and contract logistics providers, and a leader and investor in technology to enhance supply chain efficiency. Agility is a pioneer in emerging markets and one of the largest private owners and developers of warehousing and light industrial parks in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Agility’s subsidiary companies offer fuel logistics, airport services, commercial real estate and facilities management, customs digitization, and remote infrastructure services.

About Transport Intelligence (Ti)

Ti is one of the world’s leading providers of expert research and analysis dedicated to the global logistics industry. Utilizing the expertise of professionals with many years of experience in the express, road freight and logistics industries, Transport Intelligence has developed a range of market-leading web-based products, reports, profiles and services used by many of the world’s leading logistics suppliers, consultancies, banks and users of logistics services.