Uncomfortable alliances must hold the line as cyber piranhas circle

Tackling digital threats sometimes requires defenders to make common cause with those they fundamentally oppose.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

At one of the world's biggest cybersecurity forums, an eminent speaker delivers a TED-style keynote, flashing a slide of fish facing down a shark. His message is that the rapid spread of cyber threats need not breed despondency - provided countries and companies act in sync.

An industry outsider like this columnist, sitting through the recently concluded Singapore International Cyber Week, could use more of that optimism. The four-day event offered a snapshot from the cyber trenches that tends towards the grim rather than the cheerful. Even that slide invites a second reading: it could just as easily depict piranhas circling us in a world now irrevocably tethered to the internet.

The dangers highlighted at the conference, organised by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore, go beyond familiar state-backed "advanced persistent threats" that made headlines in the Republic earlier in 2025, or cybercrime syndicates operating like multinationals, with revenues said to surpass the global drug trade.

New risks are emerging. Speakers warned that the coming quantum revolution could severely weaken today's encryption - used everywhere from banking apps to the systems that secure nuclear weapons. Artificial intelligence (AI) was also cast as a double-edged sword: a tool for defenders that likewise boosts what experts call "hybrid attacks", where armed conflict combines with cyber operations and influence campaigns for maximum physical and psychological impact.

Against this backdrop, the do-not-fret refrain from senior officials and speakers such as Mr Simon Green, Japan and Asia-Pacific president of Palo Alto Networks, who flashed the fish slide, rests on two pillars.