The future of digital security lies in the hyperscale cloud

As cyber attacks rise exponentially, the scale and sophistication of the cloud enables unique threat detection and mitigation capabilities

The global digital realm is under assault. These past 18 months have seen an increase in cyber attacks across Asia, in particular, with malware attacks 1.6 times greater than in the rest of the world. At the same time, cyber criminals are shifting towards credential harvesting and ransomware, as well as an increasing focus on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Microsoft’s sign-in services observe 90bn authentication requests and 50mn password attacks daily – equivalent to 18bn password attacks every year1.

The war in Ukraine provides a stark reminder of the potential scale of today’s cyber attacks, with a series of assaults targeting the government’s critical infrastructure in an attempt to sow disinformation and cut access to critical services.

What’s more, Craig Jones, Director of Cybercrime at Interpol in Singapore, says that the spread of the dark web has helped put sophisticated tools – once only available to nation states – in the hands of criminal gangs. “If you want to commit online crime, you can find the relevant tools as a service on the dark web, and be up and running,” he says. “Criminals are now committing cyber crimes on a greater scale and at greater speed than ever before.”

Faced with such a rapidly changing landscape, companies and institutions across the Asia-Pacific region need a more effective and resilient approach to guarding against attack. For many of them, the answer is the hyperscale cloud – cloud computing built on a network of servers that can scale both effortlessly and according to changing requirements. This helps companies improve security in several critical ways.