Milestones in 2024: Q2

Concept artwork featuring data and electronics generated by Google Gemini (Imagen 3).

Milestones for Q224 included:

April

A deepfake video of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr of the Philippines apparently asking the Armed Forces to act against another nation goes viral.  

"2024 has been deemed a year of elections for Asia, as millions of voters across several countries headed to the polls to pick new governments and leaders. This trend is set to continue with countries like Singapore, India, Japan and the Philippines entering the election season in 2025," said Gareth Cox, VP, Asia Pacific & Japan, Exabeam. 

"With bad actors using AI to spread misinformation, create deepfakes and target election systems, the risk of AI-driven disinformation and cyberattacks is at an all-time high. The upcoming election season will be a true test of resilience in how well the public sector is prepared to meet these heightened risks and leverage new tools to defend democracy. One way that the public sector can fight AI-driven cyberattacks is with AI-driven cyberdefence strategies mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. 

"As bad actors often use similar tactics to gain unauthorised access to IT environments, leveraging the MITRE ATT&CK framework can provide helpful reference for threat detection. Rather than pausing AI use in fear, there is an opportunity for the public sector to harness AI’s potential for good to strengthen electoral systems against misinformation and cyberattacks, thus ensuring secure and transparent elections."   

"In the past year, it was a record year for elections worldwide where approximately 4 billion people across 60 countries were expected to vote, including major elections in the US, UK, EU, Taiwan, South Africa, and India. Generative AI made its mark on these elections, with sophisticated attacks meant to deceive voters and impact elections," noted Reuben Koh, Director of Security Strategy, Akamai Technologies APJ.

According to Koh, Akamai’s latest State of the Internet (SOTI) report found a fivefold increase in Layer 7 distributed denial of service (DDos) attacks in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region that often coincided with geopolitical events.

"2025 will be the year these tools and techniques – such as deepfakes, targeted scams, social engineering – move downmarket and become readily available to ordinary cybercriminals. Consumers and organisations need to be on the alert for fakes and scams across all forms of interaction: email, text, phone calls and video calls," he said.

May 

Singapore introduced a Cybersecurity (Amendment) Bill. 

"The CrowdStrike outage this summer, which caused over 100 flight delays at Singapore’s Changi Airport, underscored the need for better testing of automated updates and stronger digital trust. As Internet of Things (IoT) adoption grows, concerns about the safety of over-the-air updates, particularly for self-driving cars, are prompting calls for greater transparency in security practices. 

"In response to these evolving risks, Singapore's Cybersecurity (Amendment) Bill, passed earlier this year, seeks to enhance oversight and enforce stricter measures on high-risk computer systems crucial to national security," stated DigiCert in a list of 2025 predictions for the Asia Pacific region. According to the global provider of digital trust, organisations will demand resilience and zero outages in 2025.

Singapore also committed S$300 M to its National Quantum Strategy. 

"The Asia-Pacific region is at the forefront of the global quantum computing race. This surge is driven by increasing investments, robust research ecosystems, and a growing number of quantum startups and collaborations," said Terry Maiolo, VP & GM, Asia Pacific, OVHcloud.

"As quantum computers mature, we can expect to see increasing integration with AI into quantum AI. This convergence has tremendous potential from optimising complex financial models to accelerating drug discovery, with the ability to revolutionise industries."

Explore

Milestones in Q124

Milestones in Q324

Milestones in Q424

Milestones were also highlighted monthly for April, May, and June.

Hashtag: #2024milestones