Asia set to be largest cyber security spender
KUALA LUMPUR: In the span of five years, Asia will be the largest spender for issues pertaining to cyber security.
Canada’s SecDev Group principal and chief executive officer Dr Rafal Rohozinski said yesterday that the ransomware attack that affected more than 100 countries recently had served to increase awareness about cyber security and for governments to invest more in it.
“Some 63 per cent of the global spending on IT is going to occur in the Asian region next year, and over the next five years, a trillion dollars will be spent on cyber security.
“The Asian region will spend on this due to its massive number of users... cyber security is going to have an impact on life,” he said.
Rohozinski was speaking at the third plenary session for the 31st Asia-Pacific Roundtable Discussion
2017, titled “Tensions in Cyber Space: Balancing National Security, Privacy and Innovation”.
“There is increasing government involvement in trying to protect their national cyber domains and this will see moves towards legislating cyberspace in the name of security,” he said.
However, Rohozinski said the surge would have two probable outcomes.
“The question is whether this will continue to unleash the creativity to propel this region economically to the forefront of the world, or if it is going to lead us to more closed-down systems,” he said.
Earlier, Rohozinski said 50 per cent of the global percentage of the Internet population was in the Asian region, adding that the average age of Internet users in the region was 25 years old.
He said this group was entering the threshold of the adult life and would be the demographic which would challenge the status quo.
“The young adults in developing countries are more connected than ever to cyberspace and this will be a global game-changer.”
The three-day 31st APR titled “The Future of the Asia Pacific: Issues and Institutions in Flux” ends today.
APR is a project of the Asean Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (AseanIsis).