Howden join KPMG at the Cyber Range  

Howden’s Jenny Lim and Edward Wong led a cyber seminar at the KPMG Cyber Range on July 31st (sponsored by Delta Insurance), sharing insights into protecting data, the importance of cyber insurance and its role in situations like the SingHealth attack.

Incident response panelists tackled questions surrounding breaches from their own perspectives and experience – including one of the largest in Singapore’s history.  The SingHealth breach, which occurred at the end of July, affected over 1.5 million patient’s records. 

Edward Wong said, “Through the seminar’s discussion, we were able to spotlight why we can never be too complacent in our cyber defences. Companies of all shapes and sizes need to rethink how they protect, respond and recover from unexpected cyber incidents.”  

Attendees were first shown a simulated malware attack by KMPG’s Partner of Forensics, Eddie Toh – which hit home how easy breaching an organisation can be. 

The demonstration used an EternalBlue exploit tool – a tool developed by the US National Security Agency. Since being a leaked to the public domain by the Shadow Brokers group, hackers have used it to exploit a flaw in Microsoft Windows operating systems. 

One audience member commented, “Very interesting. I never knew it was so easy to breach an organisation.”

Changes in recent data protection laws in Singapore and the EU were also examined by Andrew Cook (Senior Associate from Kennedy’s Solutions) – specifically, discussions on how GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) and CSA (Cyber Security Act) will affect local businesses. 

In response to this presentation, the audience found, “The GDPR impact on Asian business was given in a very clear – very detailed and informative manner.”

Additionally, Delta insurance’s Managing Director, Mr Ian Pollard, shared best practices around cyber insurance, with insight into real claims made by businesses. 

From the panel Q&A one audience member said, “The crisis communications portion stood out from most other seminars. It was great to hear a topic often overlooked (as shared by Ms Lau Lu Ching, Partner of Klareco Communications). It flagged the urgent need for companies to do more in terms of incident response planning.”

In all, it was a lively session with an interactive audience. In attendance were senior people from diverse sectors including: insurance, asset management, real estate, hospitality, healthcare, education, entertainment, manufacturing and marine sectors. 

There was a variety of delivery methods through-out the course of the session, including a debut showing of Howden Singapore’s new Cyber video. The video, which can be viewed below, provides audiences with statistical data on cyber-crime and real-life impacts.