CSA, Cisco team up to bolster cyber defence for Singapore

The Cyber Security Agency (CSA) of Singapore is working with Cisco to bolster the nation’s national security and digital resilience. 

In an expanded collaboration with CSA, Cisco is leveraging Splunk’s security offerings and Cisco Talos to offer its expertise and capabilities to contribute to the nation’s cyber and digital resilience.

Following the acquisition of Splunk earlier this year, Cisco will provide complete visibility and insights across an organization’s entire digital footprint. It will also facilitate the cross-exchange of ideas, insights, and industry best practices with CSA and the wider cybersecurity community.

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Cisco Talos leverages more than 60 government and law enforcement partnerships and extensive product telemetry across identity, firewalls, endpoints, and more to drive digital resilience.

As part of Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program, Cisco will provide advisory support and join forces with CSA in using the latest technologies and capabilities to drive digital resilience for the country. 

This includes exploring new translations of cyber defence concepts of operations into functional requirements and technical design and technologies for national cybersecurity initiatives.

On a broader scale beyond Singapore, Cisco and CSA will work together to foster an open and secure cyberspace ecosystem for Singapore and the ASEAN region. They will explore raising the baseline level of ASEAN cybersecurity through an ASEAN Cybersecurity Assessment Model (ACAM) program. 

Both parties will also explore the feasibility of collaborating with the ASEAN-Singapore Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence to support training and assessment initiatives in neighboring ASEAN countries.

To bridge the cybersecurity skills gap, CSA and Cisco will collaborate to develop and sustain a strong cybersecurity workforce by upskilling professionals, supporting mid-career transitions, and grooming future talents. 

These will be done through various initiatives, from offering tech education under Cisco Networking Academy, one of the world’s longest-running skills-to-jobs programs, in partnership with institutes of higher learning to activities like security operation center training, workshops and Capture-the-Flag competitions.

“As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, security needs to move at machine scale,” said Tay Bee Kheng, president of Cisco ASEAN. 

“Data has become the ultimate differentiator as it enables businesses to correlate telemetry data with business context to help detect and stop issues wherever they occur,” she said.

Dan Yock Hau, assistant chief executive of CSA, said that through this partnership, CSA intends to explore new platforms to facilitate the cross-sharing of threat intelligence information as well as spearhead initiatives to boost the talent pipeline for Singapore’s cybersecurity workforce.