The great firewall of SEA’s cybersecurity startups

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Hello reader,

There’s this hilarious and infamous scene from NCIS trying to depict a system getting “hacked.”

Take a look for yourself and you’ll see why I put hacked in inverted commas. Honestly, it’s so ridiculous that you’d probably think that the show’s writers were intentionally making it look as stupid as possible.

Still, while shows like this may get it wildly wrong, cybersecurity is not a joke. Breaches seem to make the news every other week and the amount of money and personal information that’s lost is usually staggering. I personally know some people whose companies have been compromised by ransomware.

But wait, what’s that? We’ve got a ton of cybersecurity firms in Southeast Asia?

Awesome. Let’s take a look at them.

Today we look at:

• What Southeast Asia’s cybersecurity startups are up to
• Temasek-owned True Light Capital scoring US$3.3 billion for its inaugural flagship fund.

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Digital defenders to the rescue

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Remember back in the day when you had to visit all those sketchy sites to download the MP3 files of songs that you really liked? You’d have to be very careful as many of them contained phishing links or just hosted malware outright. Those days might be behind many of us but the threat of cyber attacks remains very real.

Here’s a closer look at the region’s startups helping keep cyber threats at bay.

• Crack in the armor: Unfortunately, funding for cybersecurity startups has dropped quite a bit. In Q2 2023, it only reached US$1.6 billion, a 63% decrease year on year.
• Give me all your money: The biggest cyber threat right now is ransomware as it does not require in-depth technical knowledge to pull off. It’s become so bad that hackers who do know how to code this malware have started selling “ransomware-as-a-service” platforms.
• Keeping a lid on it: Of the 37 startups we looked at for the story, 21 provide data security services while only one is categorized as a “stress tester.” Most of these 37 firms are headquartered in Singapore.

Lighting the way

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