The unpredictability continues as part of the theatrics around the North Korean peace process. Seemingly, the claimed successful leader’s meeting in Singapore, between Donald Trump and Kim Jun Un has been followed by a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Like treading on egg shells, Pompeo offered a relatively positive assessment of his meetings, however North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement the US betrayed the spirit of the Leader’s summit by making “unilateral and gangster-like” demands on the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea. The statement stated the outcome of the follow-up talks was “very concerning” because it has led to a “dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearisation that had been firm.” As if to script, the situation remains uncertain. Geopolitically, the Korean peninsula is an apparent distraction to the militarisation of the South China Sea.
Having just returned from Singapore, like Australia, there is disquiet about China and the influence it is having in the region. The perception is China is impacting Singapore with investments made elsewhere, such as port and trade development in Thailand. We were in Singapore for the inaugural Cyber Risk Meetup and discussion centred on the impact of Singapore’s Cyber Security Act, along with the key regional trends being observed. Ian Yip, APAC CTO at McAfee, Ricardo Gonçalves, APAC Head of Security Intelligence at Barclays Group and Prashant Haldankar, Co-founder at Privasec gave particular guidance on what all businesses need to be doing, particularly given the third party risks that supply chains carry in cyber environments – it is not just the big end of town taking the threat seriously – the larger enterprises are now making their suppliers accountable. Also, an extra warning to cryptocurrency traders to take special care with crypto-currencies and exchanges under sustained and sophisticated attack. Ian Yip also gave details on the McAfee Threat Report, June 2018 and the scale involved, with McAfee receiving 51 billion queries per day concerning device security…Click here to read full article.
