This session, presented by IERP faculty member Lee Chin Hon, covered the trends likely to shape cybersecurity in the near future, what threats and opportunities will arise from emerging technologies, and how organisations can manage new models of public-private information exchange, develop talent and improve management in the process. Lee’s presentation covered a wide range of issues, spanning the state of global cybersecurity and its link to sustainability, to how to set passwords and identify possible systems breaches. From the outset, he stressed the link between sustainability and technology, pointing out that including technology was integral to the ESG agenda.
The future, he said, was not about dollars and cents anymore. Instead, it was about technology, the future currency that will drive everything forward. It was important, therefore, to identify vulnerabilities now, so that the foundations laid would be robust enough to withstand the challenges of the future. Noting that sustainability means maintaining the ability to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own, he urged improvements in the application of technology in a way that could continue to provide economic growth; cybersecurity plays a critical role in this.
“Cybersecurity can preserve the benefits of digitisation,” he said. “Everything is digital today. How do we preserve the benefits of utilisation, so that we can provide equal access to economic resources?” Dependence on apps has grown exponentially in the pandemic. Food supply, especially, has come to depend highly on ICT particularly in the area of logistics. As industry rapidly digitises, spurred by the pandemic, the supply chain has become increasingly vulnerable as well. But this, together with long-term production, can be protected by cybersecurity which more robustly covers the online resources that businesses and consumers have come to depend on.
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