Keynote Speech by Ir. Allen YEUNG, JP, Government Chief Information Officer at the "(ISC)² Security Congress APAC 2017" seminar

Mr. (David) Shearer, Dr. (Jae-Woo) Lee, Mr. (Clayton) Jones, Dr. (Meng-Chow) Kang, Professor (Edward) Humphreys, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning! For those who travelled from overseas, I welcome you all to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a very digitally connected city. Let me share with you some statistics. First, we have 93% of Internet penetration household connectivity. Our average peak Internet connection speed is 130Mbps. This ranks very high globally. Besides domestic connection, Hong Kong is also well connected internationally with ten satellites, ten submarine cables and overland cables which give us 49 Tbps throughput as of now. By the end of next year, this throughput would be increased to 200 Tbps, thanks to Google and Facebook in building additional submarine cables connecting Hong Kong to Los Angeles directly. So, that makes us highly connected domestically and internationally.

These connectivities bring many tier 3 and tier 4 data centre operators, which provide an infrastructure to offer services digitally and offer a conducive environment for innovation and technology to take place. Obviously, it is very important to protect our digital infrastructure with cyber security.

In fact, we are facing cyber attacks every moment even as of now as I speak. Recently, “WannaCry” has drawn a lot of attention, which in a very short period of time attacked over 150 nations and infected 200 000 machines. Governments, public and private sectors such as hospitals, banks, utilities, major corporations, SMEs and the general public are heavily affected. It is very important that the Government, CERT bodies, communities and professionals are working together hand in hand in fighting against these cyber attacks.

First, we established the Government Computer Emergency Response Team Hong Kong (GovCERT.HK) in 2015. GovCERT.HK not only safeguards the Government from all kinds of cyber attacks, but also works with other CERT bodies around the world to share cyber information and in turn shares these information locally with the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT), the Hong Kong Police Force and all other important institutes. Our Hong Kong Police Force having a Cyber Crime Unit is also very effective and well prepared in fighting against cyber criminals. In this “WannaCry” attack, HKCERT played a very effective role in informing the community of such attacks and how to take necessary measures to protect themselves.

Educating the public in raising the awareness and how to arm with the right means and tools is very crucial so that they can prepare themselves for cyber attacks. And so, we have arranged many seminars, events and promotions for young school kids, university students and SMEs so that they can start early to get well prepared and be alerted about how to counter all these cyber attack issues. Education also goes beyond just awareness and protection. As Mr. Shearer has mentioned, we need to nurture our next generation of cyber security professionals.

Lately, we organised the Capture the Flag Contest for university students to work together against the play of cyber attack and defence and learn how to master this kind of cyber skills. Through this, we think that they can grow the interest in and perhaps develop their career into the cyber security profession.

I like to stress that governments, communities, educational institutes and everyone in this room must work hand in hand in fighting against cyber attacks so that we can all enjoy the convenience and the innovation that digital connectivity has brought to us. I thank (ISC)² for organising today’s Conference which allows professionals to share their insights and also offers a very good networking for everyone to know each other and to work with each other. I wish the Conference every success. Thank you very much.

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