Securing our digital future

Cybercrime is everywhere these days, it seems. Or maybe we are just hearing about it more regularly. In Thailand this month, a gang stole 12 million baht from 21 ATMs in six provinces by using malware to infect the system. It was two weeks before the news leaked out, and by that time the perpetrators, said to have been eastern Europeans, were long gone. The thefts, the first of their kind locally, may have been linked to similar heists in Taiwan in July.

Earlier this month, a family in Ayutthaya protested in front of police headquarters in Bangkok after they lost nearly one million baht to an online crook. The thief fooled a mobile phone operator into issuing a new SIM card — the operator didn’t even ask for ID — for the mobile number of the victim, and obtained a new passcode for the victim’s online banking app. Then he cleaned out the account. The bank has reimbursed the victim but the mobile operator remains silent.

Elsewhere, high-profile cyber attacks on banks include the theft in February of US$81 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The money was transferred to Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp before most of it was laundered through Philippine casinos.

The Philippine central bank has since moved to tighten scrutiny and regulation of currency dealers, money transfers and financial-technology companies. Legal amendments would require casinos, real estate brokers, jewellers, art and motor vehicle dealers to submit reports to the anti-money laundering watchdog.

Singapore, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with a plan to cut off web access for public servants as a defence against cyberattacks. Such a move would be a big retreat for a technologically advanced city-state that has trademarked the term “smart nation”. Security experts say such curbs are excessive and would also lower productivity among civil servants and cut then off from the people they serve. But the Cyber Security Agency insists the threat “is too real”, given how much data needs to be secured, and a breach of one ministry last year.

All these alarms are going off at a time when developing countries including Thailand are mapping out ambitious plans to build a digital economy. Thailand’s plan calls for investments from the public and private sector of $15 billion over the next five years.

No one disputes that more high-tech approaches to providing social and public services should be adopted to make Thailand more competitive. The Information and Communication Technology Ministry also has to raise awareness among citizens about the meaning and importance of the digital economy.

Digital products and services are transforming industries, enriching lives, and propelling progress. Asean economies have an opportunity to jump to the forefront of the global digital economy given strong economic fundamentals, smartphone penetration of 35% and growing rapidly, and well-developed information and communication technology (ICT) clusters.

While Asean still trails its global peers in the digital economy, it has the potential to become one of the top five digital economies in the world by 2025, according to the consulting firm AT Kearney.

With a large and youthful population increasingly equipped with smartphones, Asean has an opportunity to pioneer new digital services, especially advanced mobile financial services and e-commerce. The digital revolution could transform daily life in Asean, making physical cash increasingly obsolete and cities smarter, safer places to live.

But for such things to happen, citizens have to able to access public services digitally and transform the way they interact with both national and local governments. In this regard, the move by Singapore seems to run counter to the direction everyone needs to take.

Yes, cyber security is a problem. Organisations in Southeast Asia face an 80% higher risk of advanced cyber attacks than the global average, according to the cyber security firm FairEye. Improvement in digital infrastructure and regulations could pave the way for a digital economy, but can such ambitions be achieved when the trustworthiness of the Internet of Things is still in doubt? That seems to be the case in Thailand. Will people be willing to provide more personal details, even fingerprints, if they are not sure such information will be secure?

Policy uncertainty is another challenge. Singapore seems to have made a retreat by seeking to curb online access of a key group of workers who should be on the front lines of the smart nation. Against such a backdrop, can companies plan long-term investments in IT infrastructure? I doubt it.