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Nearly a Quarter of Exploits Sold on Cybercriminal Underground Are More Than Three Years Old

Trend Micro research warns of threat from unpatched legacy vulnerabilities

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 14 July 2021 – Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global cybersecurity leader, released new research urging organizations to focus patching efforts on the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to their organization, even if they are years old.

Trend Micro Research found that 22% of exploits for sale in underground forums are more than three years old.

To view a full copy of the report, The Rise and Fall of the N-day Exploit Market in Cybercriminal Underground, please visit: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hk/security/news/vulnerabilities-and-exploits/trends-and-shifts-in-the-underground-n-day-exploit-market.

“Criminals know that organizations are struggling to prioritize and patch promptly, and our research shows that patch delays are frequently taken advantage of,” said Tony Lee, head of consulting at Trend Micro Hong Kong and Macau. “The lifespan of a vulnerability or exploit does not depend on when a patch becomes available to stop it. In fact, older exploits are cheaper and therefore may be more popular with criminals shopping in underground forums. Virtual patching remains the best way to mitigate the risks of known and unknown threats to your organization.”

The report reveals several risks of legacy exploits and vulnerabilities, including:

  • The oldest exploit sold in the underground was for CVE-2012-0158, a Microsoft RCE.
  • CVE-2016-5195, known as the Dirty Cow exploit, is still ongoing after five years.
  • In 2020, WannaCry was still the most detected malware family in the wild, and there were over 700,000 devices worldwide vulnerable as of March 2021.
  • 47% of cybercriminals looked to target Microsoft products in the past two years.

The report also reveals a decline in the market for zero-day and N-day vulnerabilities over the past two years. This is being driven in part by the popularity of bug bounty programs, like Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, and the rise of Access-as-a-Service – the new force in the exploit market.

Access-as-a-Service has the advantages of an exploit, but all the hard work has already been done for the buyer, with underground prices starting at $1000USD.

These trends are combining to create greater risk for organizations. With nearly 50 new CVEs released per day in 2020, the pressure on security teams to prioritize and deploy timely patches has never been greater – and it’s showing. Today, the time to patch averages nearly 51 days for organizations patching a new vulnerability. To cover that gap in security protection, virtual patching is key. It is based on intrusion prevention technology and offers a hassle-free way to shield vulnerable or end-of-life systems from known and unknown threats indefinitely.

About Trend Micro

Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro’s cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world. www.trendmicro.com.hk


#TrendMicro

GBG Strengthens APAC Leadership in Singapore to Accelerate Growth in SEA

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 14 July 2021 – GBG (AIM:GBG), the global expert in digital identity, helping businesses prevent fraud and meet complex compliance requirements, has announced the appointment of Bernardi Susastyo as General Manager of Asia, Shekhar Bhagat as Head of Alliances of Asia Pacific (APAC) and Ng Han Liong as Head of Presales of Southeast Asia (SEA) to drive GBG’s growth and innovation capabilities across the region.

Last month, GBG announced record financial performance, profits & customer satisfaction, registering a year-on-year constant currency organic revenue growth of 12.1 per cent between FY2020 and FY2021. To further bolster this growth momentum, the new senior hires will lead and drive penetration in key markets across APAC. In addition to these senior hires, the company is continuing to invest in talents and is recruiting more than 100 roles globally, out of which 42 per cent will be within the APAC region.

The pandemic has accelerated digitalisation in this region, which resulted in a hyper growth in the digital population; in Southeast Asia alone, more than 40 million users came online in 2020. With today’s digital-first economy, financial institutions (FIs) need more robust measures to bridge the increasing volume and complexities of online fraud, financial crime and cyberthreats. To deepen GBG’s engagement with senior decision makers and further enrich fraud and compliance management, the company has made the following senior appointments based out of Singapore:

  • Bernardi Susastyo joins as General Manager of Asia. Bernardi brings with him close to three decades of industry experience and has held various senior leadership positions at Advance.AI, Experian, and SAS. With his extensive knowledge of the SEA financial services industry, Bernardi will be responsible for bolstering GBG’s foothold and establishing market leadership especially in the SEA region.
  • Shekhar Bhagat joins as Head of Alliances of APAC. Shekhar will be responsible for establishing technology and data partnerships, as well as a network of channel partners to support local sales activation across APAC. Today, GBG’s Intelligence Center ingests datasets from both APAC and global technology and data partners to offer nine built-in capabilities that enriches fraud detection using data such as IP, device, email, endpoint threat, location, mobile, and social media. By bringing more APAC technology and data partners onboard, GBG aims to add more regional datasets to provide customers with even stronger dynamic data intelligence to enrich fraud detection and prevention. Shekhar joins from Experian, where he was Director of Partnership for SEA.
  • Ng Han Liong joins as Head of Presales of SEA. Han Liong is an experienced regional solution leader and compliance specialist, having spent the last 10 years in Oracle, Thomson Reuters, and IBM working with the financial services sector. He will facilitate market penetration efforts and sales readiness to expand our reach into Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines further. With the addition of this role, GBG is committed to continue engaging with customers in a consultative style – providing more holistic solutions to both new and existing customers.


Dev Dhiman, Managing Director, APAC at GBG shared, “Bernardi, Shekhar, and Han Liong, bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to GBG that will enable us to boost our presence in the region and position ourselves for long-term sustainable growth in Southeast Asia, and across APAC. Today, GBG is well-positioned as APAC’s leading fraud, compliance, identity and location intelligence solution provider, for both large and small organisations across multiple industries. Having these new hires onboard will enable us to grow from strength to strength.”

“Singapore is Asia’s premier business and tech hub with excellent regional and international relations, local talent pool, and collaborative tech ecosystem in the financial services space. Leveraging on these resources, the team will bring to market sustainable solutions and create robust partnerships across data, technology, and channels that can help financial institutions improve the detection and prevention of emerging financial crime. ” continues Dhiman.

Rest of APAC

In addition to investing in talent and growing its leadership team in Singapore, GBG is also increasing its technology footprint in Malaysia. The technology team size in Malaysia has grown by four times to focus on innovating the next-gen financial crime platform. This investment is critical to keep our award-winning solutions ahead of evolving financial crimes. Further south in APAC, our acquisition of greenID identity verification solution, and Loqate location intelligence solution, has seen a healthy year-on-year growth. These solutions are serving a number of verticals including financial services, fintech, wagering, telco, government, retail, and education in the Oceanic region today and their strong market fit would benefit customers in Asia as we broaden our identity verification and location intelligence product portfolio in the coming months.

Technology Leadership

As the category leader across three Chartis RiskTech Quadrant®— Enterprise Fraud Management, Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML)—GBG is committed to innovating and fortifying defences to be more proactive and agile against the burgeoning threat of Financial Crime 4.0. Helping organisations build digital trust with modern fraud and compliance platform with dynamic data intelligence and AI is a prime focus for APAC.

For more information about GBG’s range of solutions in APAC, click here.

To view GBG recent awards and achievements, visit us here.

To read our recent press releases, click here.

About GBG:

GBG offers a range of solutions that help organisations quickly validate and verify the identity and location of their customers. Our market-leading technology, data and expertise help our customers improve digital access, deliver a seamless experience and establish trust so that they can transact quickly, safely and securely with their customers online.

Headquartered in the UK and with over 1,000 team members across 16 countries, we work with 20,000 customers in over 70 countries. Some of the world’s best-known businesses rely on GBG to provide digital services and keep the economy moving, from US e-commerce giants to Asia’s biggest banks and European household brands.

To find out more about how we help our clients establish trust with their customers, visit www.gbgplc.com/apac, follow us on Twitter @gbgplc or LinkedIn.

#GBG

Switzerland Provides Essential Food Support to Returning Migrant Workers in Quarantine

Officials from the Lao Government, SDC, and WFP attend the signing ceremony on Monday
Officials from the Lao Government, SDC, and WFP attend the signing ceremony on Monday

VIENTIANE – The Ministry of Health, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the World Food Programme (WFP) agreed on Monday to cooperate to provide food to returnees in mandatory COVID-19 quarantine Centres.

According to the agreement signed at the Ministry of Health today, SDC is contributing nearly USD 790,000 in food assistance for quarantine centres in 6 provinces throughout Lao PDR. This donation will enable WFP and its implementing partners to continue providing three daily nutritious meals to an estimated 8,000 migrant workers returning from neighbouring countries to their home in Laos. The support will cover over 335,000 meals for a period of about 2.5 months.

The provision of daily meals to returning migrant workers in these centres contributes to keeping the returnees in quarantine for the entire mandatory period of 14 days. The support also helps maintain their health and wellbeing, while reducing the financial burden on them and their families.

“The recent wave of COVID-19 cases in Laos can be linked to spikes in infection rates of neighbouring countries. Quarantine centres play a vital role in preventing and controlling their spread across the borders of the country. We are happy that all Lao citizens can return home, while those inside the borders of the country can stay safe from the pandemic. This support contributes to curbing the spread of the pandemic,” said Dr Bounfeng Phommalaysith, Lao Minister of Health.

“This specific support with the WFP is part of a broader effort from Switzerland to support the Lao PDR in combatting the COVID-19 and in recovering from the economic crisis in the wake of the pandemic. Switzerland has provided a total of USD 3.5 million through several projects in response to the Government of Lao PDR’s COVID-19 prevention and control strategy,” said Jean Francois Cuénod SDC Regional Director For Mekong Region.

“We are delighted that the Government of Switzerland is helping to support returning migrants who have faced challenges regarding their income and livelihoods. Since June 2020, our food assistance initiative has – in partnership with the Swiss Red Cross, the Lao Red Cross and World Vision International – delivered about 1 million meals to over 42,000 beneficiaries. With these funds from SDC, we can continue this much-needed activity,” said WFP Deputy Country Director Jacqueline de Groot.

Give Gift Boutique and Fruitually Have Taken Measures To Cater To Changes In Fruit Demand

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 14 July 2021 – The hot summer is a time when fruits are selling rapidly. Many citizens said that under the epidemic, everyone is concerned about the health of themselves and those around them, so they will buy delicious fruits for themselves and for the people they care for. The CEO of Give Gift Boutique and the CEO of Fruitually said that tremendous changes have taken place in the consumption behavior of fruit this year. Thus, they are taking measures to meet the changes in customer needs, such as providing online shopping service, reducing packaging costs, and improving the quality of logistics services, to meet the demand for a quality life.

“Quality First” Has Become A Trend

These years, there’s a trend of buying high-priced fruits in Hong Kong. The sale of imported fruits is soared, and the fruits of medium and high prices are especially popular with young people. Although imported fruits are nutritious, they are expensive, and their exquisite packaging contributes a large part of the price. Thus, Fruitually imports superior-quality fruits from the globe and use the concise package to reduce prices as much as possible. In addition, they import high-quality and low-cost fruits for customers to choose from. The measures seem rebel, but the CEO of Fruitually said that he believes these measures will be welcomed by customers, “According to our sales data, in addition to the famous imported fruit, the sales of high-quality fruits with a better price is soaring which shows consumers still value the quality of fruits the most”.

Online Fruit Shopping Has Become The Norm

Many consumers are worried that the fruit will become rotten or late arrival for online fruit shopping, so they usually buy on their trusted online shop. The CEO of Fruitually said that frequent customers cover at least half of their customers. To retain frequent customers and attract new customers, they provide online channels, such as the online shop of Fruitually, WhatsApp group, network broadcast, and other quick purchasing channels, and order special couriers to deliver fruits within the next day. What’s more, they had promised if there are some rotten fruits, they will exchange them with the fine ones. He wishes these measures could deepen the trust.

Adding Superior-Quality Imported Fruits To Fruit Hampers

The epidemic has generated a “healthy style” for gifting. The demand for fruit hampers has increased slightly than before, especially since some companies have ordered quite many exquisite fruit hampers with superior quality imported fruits to their clients. On the other hand, the demand for fruit gift baskets has become more personalized. For example, people prefer hampers with imported fruits and practical gifts like baby products, festive gifts, and decorations at a reasonable price.

Give Gift Boutique knows that consumers like practical gifts most, therefore Give Gift Boutique plans to add more kinds of superior quality imported fruit and high-scoring practical gifts of the globe to enrich the categories and make their effort to keep exquisite packaging as well as a reasonable price.

About Fruitually And Give Gift Boutique

“Fruitually ” is a local online fruit company. The company team has more than ten years of experience in fruit procurement. It takes the highest quality fruit, the most reasonable price, and the most convenient delivery service as its principles. In addition to the store, it also provides online fruit ordering and door-to door delivery services. https://www.fruitually.com/

Give Gift Boutique is the leading online flower shop in Hong Kong. It is managed by senior florist designers in the Netherlands and Toronto. It operates in the boutique workshop model and serves corporate and individual customers throughout the year. Since its opening in 2008, it has been committed to providing customers with high-quality flower bouquets, mid autumn gifts, birthday gifts, etc. https://www.givegift.com.hk/

#GiveGiftBoutique #Fruitually

Cloud Comrade wins the 2021 AWS Consulting Partner of the Year Award for Singapore

– The award recognises Cloud Comrade’s performance in service delivery, growth in AWS business, and a significant contribution to Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in Singapore/ ASEAN region in the past year.

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 14 July 2021 – Cloud Comrade, a leading Singapore-based cloud computing consultancy and managed services provider (MSP) with a growing presence in Malaysia and Indonesia, has been named the Amazon Web Services (AWS) 2021 Consulting Partner of the Year for Singapore.

The award recognizes AWS Partners who play a key role in helping their customers drive innovation and digital transformation of their businesses through creative and optimum use of their IT infrastructure with impactful solutions built on AWS.

Cloud Comrade has continued to reinforce its industry-agnostic capabilities in cloud migration and optimization while developing deep expertise across related IT services to enable customers to overcome their dynamic and complex challenges faster and more effectively. The company’s roster of clients spans a wide spectrum of industries, prominent among which are manufacturing, financial services, retail, logistics, public sector, education, and healthcare.

Commenting on the award, Andy Waroma, Cloud Comrade’s co-founder and co-managing director, said, “We are honored and grateful for the recognition by AWS once again. We are optimistic that our success in Singapore and the growth across key ASEAN markets during the universally challenging time last year will be a good springboard for impacting more clients.”

“It is immensely fulfilling to see the results of an enormously fruitful collaboration between our customers, AWS, and ourselves. We recognize the changing expectations of IT deployments from our customers in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Our customers can be assured that, together with AWS, we are committed to helping them with solutions that aim not only to benefit their bottom line but also serve as strategic differentiators.”

“At AWS ASEAN, we consider our partners to be an extension of our team. Never has this shared obsession with serving our customers been more visible than over the last twelve months, where we have seen so many ASEAN partners go above and beyond on behalf of our customers,” said Conor McNamara, Managing Director, AWS ASEAN. “The AWS ASEAN Partner Awards is an opportunity for us to recognize the exceptional contributions of AWS Partners from across ASEAN. We are humbled by the collective commitment of our partner community and congratulate all award winners on this well-deserved recognition.”

Cloud Comrade is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and a recipient of several accolades in its short history. Named as 2020 AWS Migration Partner of the Year – ASEAN, the company is also the first AWS Premier Consulting Partner in ASEAN to receive the AWS SAP Competency in 2019 and AWS Well-Architected Partner status in 2019. Cloud Comrade has also attained the AWS MSP Competency and AWS Migration Competency, and is now an AWS Managed Service Provider in ASEAN. Besides cloud migrations, Cloud Comrade is also recognized for its extensive experience in the area of complex SAP deployments on AWS.

About Cloud Comrade:

Cloud Comrade (https://cloudcomrade.com) is a Singapore-based cloud computing consultancy company with a regional footprint in Indonesia and Malaysia also. The company offers a comprehensive range of services from strategy and design to deployment, migration, and management of customers’ IT infrastructure. Cloud Comrade partners with the best solution providers in the field of cloud computing and is a preferred Amazon Web Services (AWS) consulting partner in ASEAN, as well as a managed service provider for AWS, Google, and Alibaba Cloud. In January 2019, ST Telemedia (sttelemedia.com), an active strategic investor specializing in communications & media, data centers, and infrastructure technology businesses, acquired a majority stake in the company. For more information on Cloud Comrade, visit cloudcomrade.com

#CloudComrade

Laos Sees No Community Spread, 75 Imported Cases of Covid-19

Covid-19 Update

Laos has confirmed 75 new cases of Covid-19 today, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 2,976.

Lao Construction Bank Depositors to Retrieve Funds Next Month

Lao Construction Bank

Authorities have confirmed that funds will be repaid to Lao Construction Bank Limited (LCB) depositors in August following the bank’s failure in late 2019.

Coface Announces Risk Barometer Q2 2021: A Two-Speed World

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 14 July 2021 – 18 months after the start of the pandemic, access to vaccination is now the main factor setting the pace of people’s daily lives and the global economy. GDP growth forecasts for 2021 have been revised upwards (+5.6%), but this is mainly the result of positive surprises from the United States. These improved growth prospects are reflected in world trade: after a 5% decline in volume last year, Coface forecasts an 11% increase for 2021.

In this context of growth in international trade, countries exporting raw materials are benefiting from an improvement in their terms of trade. At the same time, the slow progress of vaccination campaigns in emerging countries makes it unlikely that herd immunity will be achieved in the next twelve months. This suggests that stop-go processes will persist, and continue to constrain domestic demand in most emerging economies.

Finally, Coface notes an increase in political risk linked to the health crisis and the acceleration of inflation.

Europe and North America in 2022: towards the end of stop-go and new infrastructure investments

The major health trends have accelerated since Coface published its last Barometer in April, with the vaccination process progressing faster in North America and Europe than in the rest of the world. The acceleration of these vaccination campaigns, combined with the effects of mobility restrictions in the spring, led to a drop in the number of new infections in these areas. Local authorities were therefore able to reopen parts of the economy before the summer. However, two risks make the continuation of this positive trend uncertain:

  • The slowdown in the rate of vaccination which, if confirmed in the coming months, will delay the achievement of herd immunity.
  • The threshold for achieving herd immunity is all the higher as the virus is rapidly transmitted between people. However, the appearance of new variants that are more rapidly transmissible raises fears of possible new waves of contamination in the coming months.

Provided that these two risks do not materialise, the European and North American economies should be back to near-normal functioning by the end of the summer.

Few changes are to be noted in the growth forecasts. The upward revision of global growth expected in 2021 (+5.6%, +0.5 point compared to the last Coface Barometer) is largely attributable to the United States (+6.5% this year), whose economy has continued to surprise favourably since last summer. These improved growth prospects are reflected in world trade: the Coface model indicates a growth of11% this year.

On the positive side, the implementation of the infrastructure plan announced by Joe Biden will benefit many sectors of activity if it is adopted. In Europe, the release of the stimulus funds announced in July 2020 will have a differentiated impact on economies and will serve multiple purposes: supporting demand, accelerating recovery and promoting development in growth sectors.

For companies, however, an increase in production costs is to be expected: in addition to a persistent shortage of certain electronic components, it also affects transport costs, as well as raw material prices which are expected to remain high.

Emerging economies: domestic demand constrained by stop-go and inflation

Since the beginning of April, the health situation has remained difficult in several Latin American countries (notably Brazil and Argentina), and in India. Further increases in the number of infections have also been observed in several Asian countries (e.g. Malaysia, Thailand, Korea and Singapore), with high-frequency mobility indicators pointing to lower economic activity in these areas. The number of people infected with the virus also increased rapidly in Africa and Russia in early summer. The trend is more positive in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Turkey.

Besides the health context, the rise in inflation (+8.1% year-on-year in Brazil, a 5-year high) and the subsequent tightening of certain monetary policies are likely to limit the extent of the recovery in domestic demand. Countries whose materials account for a large share of imports will be penalised by a significant rise in their import prices. This is the case for China, whose imports of raw materials represent more than 30% of its total purchases of foreign goods. While consumer inflation remains contained in China at this stage (+1.3% over one year), the sharp rise in producer prices (+9% YOY, a 12-year high) argues for its acceleration in the months to come.

Strong increase in political risk linked to accelerating inflation in the context of the health crisis

Inflationary risks have been in the news in recent months. In this context, the annual update of the Coface Political Risk Index shows a strong rise in political risk across the world, and particularly in the emerging countries. Indeed, figures show a deterioration in living standards and purchasing power, as well as a rise in inequalities observed following the COVID-19 crisis. At this stage, these conditions are not necessarily leading to popular uprisings, which remain limited by people’s capacity to mobilise.

In 2020, the social risk index rose sharply (+5 points) to 51% at the global level, reached its highest-ever level. Despite the numerous fiscal and monetary support measures, 140 of the 160 countries assessed saw their GDP decline last year. At the same time, the unemployment rate has increased in 145 of these 160 countries. The increase in this risk is more marked in high-income economies, which have a lower initial risk level. However, despite these developments, the countries with the highest level of social risk remain Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Iran, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia.

The conflict index, the second component of the Coface Political Risk Index, is calculated according to the number of conflicts, their intensity, the number of victims and their duration. In 2020, Azerbaijan and Ethiopia saw an increase in this index due to the conflicts observed on their territories. They are followed by countries fighting terrorism or in civil war, such as the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali.

The complete Barometer is available here.

Coface: for trade

With 75 years of experience and the most extensive international network, Coface is a leader in trade credit insurance and adjacent specialty services, including Factoring, Debt Collection, Single Risk insurance, Bonding and Information services. Coface’s experts work to the beat of the global economy, helping ~50,000 clients, in 100 countries, build successful, growing, and dynamic businesses across the world. Coface helps companies in their credit decisions. The Group’s services and solutions strengthen their ability to sell by protecting them against the risks of non-payment in their domestic and export markets. In 2020, Coface employed ~4,450 people and registered a turnover of €1.45 billion.

www.coface.com

COFACE SA. is listed on Compartment A of Euronext Paris.

ISIN Code: FR0010667147 / Mnemonic: COFA

#Coface