SINGAPORE: On the CNBC CONVERGE LIVE occasion in Singapore on Wednesday (April 22), Tan Su Shan, the highest govt of DBS, the most important financial institution in Southeast Asia, mentioned that the danger that retains her awake at night time entails cyberattacks.
Ms Tan, who mentioned that “the brand new struggle is cyber,” underlined how unpredictable all these assaults are, inflicting banks to be hyper vigilant towards them.
“What retains me awake at night time is cyber. It’s who’s going to assault who, and the way it’s going to occur, how folks will get affected,” CNBC reported the DBC Chief Govt Officer as saying on the sidelines of the occasion.
In December 2024, Examine Level’s Risk Intelligence Report mentioned that within the earlier six months, banks in Singapore had handled 1,830 cyberattacks every week on common. After the federal government/navy and utilities sectors, the monetary sector is the third most focused trade.
In October 2023, a cyberattack on Singapore’s native banks succeeded in disrupting the nationwide fee system. The assault, which affected DBS and Citibank, brought on 810,000 makes an attempt to entry digital banking to fail, and round 2.5 million fee and ATM transactions couldn’t be accomplished.
Since then, Expertise Threat Administration Pointers had been issued by the Financial Authority of Singapore, the city-state’s central financial institution, to assist monetary establishments deal with this sort of threat.
Ms Tan advised CNBC in regards to the continued state of alert banks have to have, including that DBS has adopted an method she summed up as “Assume nothing, belief nothing, belief no person,” in addition to a tradition she described as “deliberate paranoia.”
This has meant always simulating cyberattacks with a view to stress-test the financial institution’s techniques with a view to see weaknesses earlier than attackers do, provided that synthetic intelligence is making extra advanced assaults attainable.
She added, “We’re always being paranoid about cybersecurity… what’s going to separate the winners from the losers is nice adoption, sensible adoption, secure adoption.”
Ms Tan additionally emphasised how essential it’s for corporations and establishments to be ready for something, saying, “Put together for the worst, hope for the perfect, however have that playbook prepared.”
The CEO, who has been with DBS since 2010, took over when former prime govt Piyush Gupta stepped down in March 2025. In October, she was named probably the most highly effective girl in Asia by Fortune, topping the journal’s 2025 Most Highly effective Girls Asia record. /TISG
Learn additionally: DBS group CEO Tan Su Shan tops Fortune’s record of Most Highly effective Girls in Asia 2025
