Singapore is setting up a protective domain name service (PDNS) to proactively keep Internet users away from malware and phishing websites, as part of a refreshed national strategy to beef up cyber defences.
This new measure is aimed at enhancing protection at the national level, by automatically blocking access to these sources of online threats on a broad scale.
Without this, unwitting users could have their PCs or mobile devices compromised after visiting websites that infect their devices. These can then be used against them or for attacks against key infrastructure such as telecom, banking or government services.
PDNS works as an additional layer of defence by ensuring that users get on the Internet through “safe” gateways that are likely to be set up by Internet service providers here.
Singapore’s PDNS measure is expected to be up next year. The city-state will join countries such as Britain, Australia and Estonia that have set up similar defences to counter increasingly sophisticated attacks.
Earlier this year, Singapore mounted Operation Cyber Guardian, the country’s largest coordinated cyber incident response effort to fight off a threat against its telecom infrastructure. It identified the attackers as UNC3886, a group that Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant links to China.
Singapore new PDNS will be run by the National Cybersecurity Command Centre, which will help the Cyber Security Agency to coordinate responses to major cyber incidents.
The new measures are part of a refreshed cybersecurity strategy that will guide the country in national-level defences, including for critical infrastructure.
Announcing the strategy today at the Singapore International Cyber Week, Singapore’s Senior Minister K Shanmugam pointed to similar attacks against key infrastructure in Poland and South Korea in the past year.
In Poland, the attackers targeted more than 30 wind and solar energy installations and a combined heat-and-power plant that was supplying heat to nearly 500,000 people, he noted.
In South Korea, sensitive data of nearly 27 million user records had been compromised from a data breach of the country’s largest mobile carrier, he added.
“A sophisticated attacker does not see the government and telcos as separate,” he noted. “They are not separate silos.”
He called for government and industry to work closely together to bolster the country’s national defence against coordinated attacks that look for weak points.
Among other things, Singapore’s refreshed strategy seeks to enable cyber defenders to identify potential entry points for threat actors and remediate them earlier.
At the same time, AI-enabled systems are expected to help cyber defenders track ongoing incidents, develop operational assessments, and plan next actions.
Shanmugam, who is also Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs, said cyber defenders have to “act at the speed of the threat.”
“If AI allows attackers to identify vulnerabilities and conduct attacks more quickly, then the defenders will have to use AI too,” he noted.
