Singaporeans clueless about nation's critical infrastructure

Majority do not know government programs, or if they do, care little about it.

This unawareness threatens the country's resiliency should cyberattacks arise in their company or across the island nation, a new Symantec survey warned.

"Companies were generally less aware this year of their government’s Critical Infrastructure Protection programs. Singapore’s results were similar to the global results, with 33 percent indicating that they were somewhat or completely aware," said Symantec.

"When asked to voice their opinion about government CIP programs, more chose ‘neutral’ or ‘no opinion’. (46 percent) Plus, they are now slightly less willing to cooperate with government CIP programs than they were one year ago (49 percent)," it added.

Cyberattack readiness has suffered because of these drops in awareness and engagement.

"It is not surprising that as an organization’s assessment of the threat drops, their readiness drops as well. For example, overall readiness fell an average of 8 points in 2011 (48 to 55 percent this year were ‘somewhat’ to ‘extremely’ prepared compared to last year)."

The survey noted a decrease of 5 to 10 percent in readiness:

• Network security measures
• Messaging security
• Website security
• Endpoint security
• Security monitoring
• Access control to infrastructure and information based on user credentials
• Disaster recovery planning
• Security audit
• Security response
• Security training
• Awareness and appreciation of threat by executive management

Symantec recommended stronger corporate compliance policies to shore up the gap recorded this year.