AI in Southeast Asia: As new frontier opens in scams and cyberbullying, authorities wage high-tech battle

The agency is also looking into large language models that have led to an increase in “potency and proliferation of phishing scams”, said Ms Cheryl Tan, deputy director of sense-making and surveillance centre of expertise at HTX.

Cybersecurity firms CNA spoke to have also adopted AI to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

An example is the analysis of behaviour patterns to detect anomalies that can indicate potential attacks, said Mr Johan Fantenberg, a Principal Solutions Architect APJ at Ping Identity. 

Another cybersecurity firm, Infoblox, also makes use of AI to help security teams detect threats. 

“On an average day, security teams could look at anywhere from 500,000 to a million security reports, varying from false positives to serious threats,” said Mr Paul Wilcox, Vice President of Infoblox Asia Pacific and Japan. 

Infoblox uses AI-driven analytics to help distil the number to a much more manageable figure, allowing security teams to concentrate their attention on these.

AI in cybersecurity is “increasingly critical” to protecting online systems, said cybersecurity firm Fortinet. If used correctly, AI systems can be trained to detect threats automatically, identify new strands of malware and protect sensitive data, it added.

“However, organisations also need to be aware that cyber criminals adjust their methods to resist new AI cybersecurity tools,” said Fortinet in an article on its website.

While some governments in the region are establishing rules to deal with the potential misuse of AI, these may not be enough to deter criminals, Mr Wilcox from Infoblox noted.

“Proactive early detection for crime prevention is far more effective than responding to cyber threats only when it happens,” he added.

Still, having AI rules is still better than none, analysts pointed out, highlighting a regional guide on AI governance and ethics that was launched this month.

Despite being voluntary, the guidelines by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are likely to be influential on organisations as well as policy makers, pointed out Mr Benjamin Wong, a lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Law. 

Mr Wong added that the endorsement of the AI guidelines by ASEAN member states shows that governments are aware of the risks, and are aligned on principles including transparency, security, privacy and data governance.