Malaysian organ donor data breach stresses need for cyber investment

The personal details of some 220,000 Malaysian organ donors and their next of kin have been leaked online since September 2016, according to technology magazine website Lowyat.net. This news came only a day after global consulting firm A.T. Kearney published a report that concludes that member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) need to seriously step up their spending on cybersecurity and tackle fast-rising digital threats. The report concludes that failure to invest properly in cyber defence could potentially cost the top 1,000 companies in the region about $750bn in market capitalisation and pose a big threat to digital innovation in the region. The organ donor breach story follows an earlier report on the same website, which claimed that the personal data of some 46.2 million Malaysians had been stolen and sold online. The site claims that the latest leaked files include the organ donor's name, identification card number, race, nationality, address and phone numbers. The data also contains details about each organ donor's nominated next of kin. This brings the total number of data-leak victims to 440,000 in this single case. Vijandren Ramadass, the founder of Lowyat.net, reportedly told Reuters that the leak was discovered because it was being shared on a popular file sharing site for free. "The files are still online now. We did submit a direct request to the host on Sunday to remove the files but we didn't get any response," he told the news agency. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, reportedly said it was assisting the police in their investigations into the reported leak. The police did not comment. Malaysian Digital Economy Consumer Association secretary-general Muhammad Sha’ani Abdullah reportedly said government agencies that are involved in the collection of personal data need to invest in security measures to prevent any further data breaches. Such investment is exactly what consulting firm A.T. Kearney said needs to happen right now across the entire ASEAN region or economic development will be seriously hampered. Cyber defence is particularly important for a region in which e-commerce has become absolutely critical for future growth. At the end of last year, Google and Singapore investment fund Temasek published a joint report that claims that Southeast Asia's internet economy would hit $50bn in 2017 and $200bn by 2025. This will mean that the internet economy will leap up from 2% of regional gross domestic product today to 6% by 2025, states the report. The region's e-commerce market is forecast to reach $10.9bn in gross merchandise value in 2017 and ride hailing services alone could hit $5.1bn, the report notes. The problem is, of course, that as the value of this part of the economy grows it becomes more attractive to cybercriminals. They invest in their capabilities and so efforts to tackle the threats need to be stepped up on a regional basis. The A.T. Kearney report states that countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam have become "global hotspots" for suspicious web activities, reported news service CNBC last week. It states that hackers are using vulnerable, insecure infrastructure in these countries to launch cyberattacks. The report states that last year, countries on average spent 0.13% of their GDP on cybersecurity. Asean countries as a group only spent 0.06% , or $1.9bn, collectively. Singapore was the only country in the region to spend more than the global average. CNBC reported that A.T. Kearney advises that to remedy the situation, the Asean group of countries need to increase spending on cybersecurity by between 0.35% and 0.61% of their collective GDP between 2017 and 2025. This represents about $171bn of investment.

Malaysian organ donor data breach stresses need for cyber investment

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