More than 400,000 asset risks found in 25 largest SG firms

The firms have outdated tech for protecting against these risks.

Nearly 16,000 internet-facing assets were detected at risk of potential exploitation in an individual Singapore organisation in a study that evaluated 25 Singapore businesses with the largest market cap.

Tenable, an exposure management firm, also said the top 25 organisations in each of the markets in Australia, India, Japan, and Singapore, have more than 1 million combined potential Internet-facing vulnerabilities.

It observed that out of the total number of assets in Singapore, the businesses had over 200,000 still support TLS 1.0 [a security protocol first defined in 1999 for establishing encrypted channels over computer networks] which was disabled by Microsoft in September 2022.

"This is just one example demonstrating how challenging it’s become for organisations with large internet footprints to identify and update outdated technology," read the study.

Over 8,000 assets are still susceptible to the Log4J vulnerability, which is a primary cause of the majority of cyberattacks.

Over 6,000 assets out of the total also initially intended for internal use have been exposed and are now accessible externally.

There is also the identification of over 6,000 APIs out of the total assets amongst the businesses' digital infrastructure poses a substantial risk to security.

Nigel Ng, Senior Vice President, Tenable APJ, advised that there may be an advanced digital adoption in Singapore but an immense scale of cybersecurity framework is still needed to shield against cyberattacks and protect critical systems.

The article was revised to correct an error in the title and factual information at the introductory sentence.