NTT Security launches in Thailand as region's cyber risk grows

NTT Group's specialist cybersecurity firm NTT Security says Thailand's economy brings great potential as the ASEAN region's second biggest GDP, but that comes with increased cyber risks.

NTT Security will also expand into Thailand to bring managed security services and specialised professional security services for organisations and governments with business operations in the region.

According to NTT Security's regional CEO Martin Schlatter, Thailand is second only to Indonesia in ASEAN in terms of GDP, with 3.3% growth in 2018.

"It has developed a global reputation for growth within the manufacturing and exporting of goods and services within the automotive and electronics sectors," he says.

"Thailand is now working on shifting to high value-added manufacturing and growing the service industry. However, with this growth, comes an increase in targeted cyber attacks, particularly those aimed at manufacturers for their intellectual property. This, in turn, creates demand for cybersecurity services from specialised security companies such as NTT Security.

NTT will take its services to market through Dimension Data, NTT Communications and NTT DATA, which are all part of NTT Group.

NTT Security CEO Jun Sawada says the company is pleased to provide cyber resilience to Thailand organisations undergoing digital transformation.

"Our Managed Security Services with expert security analysts and proprietary analytics platform powered by Global Threat Intelligence have been providing strong Threat Detection and Hunting capabilities to NTT customers worldwide," Sawada says.

According to NTT Security's Global Threat Intelligence Centre, Asia has been a major contributor to the Mirai botnet. Thailand servers have hosted 9% of botnet communications.

Thailand also ranks 19th for hosting command and control servers that are used to remotely send commands to a botnet.

NTT Security's Q2 Global Threat Intelligence Report also found that manufacturing is the most targeted industry in Asia, accounting for 32% of all attacks. Globally, 34% of all documented attacks targeted manufacturers.

"Asian businesses are failing on a large scale to adequately secure their endpoints, and there is no question that cyber criminals are looking to capitalize on this," Schlatter says.

"It's therefore increasingly important to embed security solutions and processes into the very fabric of the business. If compromised, corporate devices participating in such attacks may be blacklisted, damaging the organization's reputation and ability to function effectively online.

NTT Security has multiple security operations centers, seven R-D centers, more than 1500 employees and handles incidents across six continents.