SingTel and FireEye to launch cyber security centres in Sydney and Singapore
Tue 7 Oct 2014
Telco giant SingTel and US cyber security firm FireEye have raised $50mn to launch two security operations centres (SOCs) in Singapore and Sydney as part of a partnership between the companies which will deliver managed security services.
It is estimated that 150 security professionals will be employed across the two sites, including malware experts and emergency responders, who will be trained by staff already working at SOCs in the US.
At the MIRCon conference in Washington today, FireEye CEO David DeWalt emphasised that the SOCs would proactively hunt for malware, unlike most cyber security groups, such as McAfee and Symantec, which simply monitor alerts.
“By leveraging all virtual machines and all intelligence including all the broadband information that SingTel offers we have point intelligence [to] proactively fix the threat,” DeWalt told the press.
“Symantec, McAfee, IBM and others who have developed MSPs (Managed Security Provider) are very reactive, very alert based, and have very difficult times understanding what’s a true problem versus a false problem,” he explained.
SingTel group enterprise chief executive Bill Chang also announced that a total of $50mn had been invested by the two organisations over a five year period. He revealed that local businesses, financial institutions, and governmental bodies have already shown an interest in using SOC services.
“They have not been signed up but have demonstrated keen interest – these are enterprises and multinational corporates in Australia and Singapore,” said Chang.
Chang did suggest that recruiting security professionals in the area would present a challenge, due to a shortage of adequate skillsets.
During the press meeting, a FireEye survey was cited which found that a huge 97 per cent of businesses had been compromised from cyber-attacks, from minor breaches to advanced hacks.
FireEye is reportedly scouting for malware on 60mn command and control servers in 204 countries.
