SINGAPORE, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat announced Singapore's Safer Cyberspace Masterplan 2020 at the opening ceremony of the virtual Singapore International Cyber Week on Tuesday evening.
He said the masterplan outlines the Singaporean government's blueprint to create a safer cyberspace in Singapore, tackling the high-volume, day-to-day cyber threats faced by the Singaporean people, businesses and organization.
Heng said cybercrime in Singapore grew by more than 50 percent year on year in 2019, and now cybercrime accounts for more than one-quarter of all crimes in Singapore. Even though general crimes have come down, cybercrime has gone up.
"These trends do not mean that we backtrack on digitalization," said the deputy prime minister. "Instead, as the digital arena expands, we must redouble our efforts to strengthen our resilience to cyber threats."
The masterplan focuses on three thrusts, which are upstream measures to secure Singapore's core digital infrastructure, early detection to safeguard Singaporean's activities in cyberspace, and empowering Singaporean people to build greater awareness and adoption of cyber hygiene practices.
According to a press release from the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), under the masterplan, the Singaporean government will collaborate with mobile network operators to secure Singapore's 5G networks, and review and update the multi-tier cloud security standard for cloud services, so as to strengthen the protection of the Internet architecture in Singapore.
CSA said it aims to implement initiatives in the Masterplan from 2021 to 2023 and will review the masterplan regularly to keep up with the prevailing cyber threat landscape. Enditem
