In spite of our new working reality all over Southeast Asia, Horangi both organized and participated in a host of virtual events throughout April 2020. If you were a part of any of our events, we are glad you could join us.

Like all other businesses, Horangi has needed to adapt to the new working conditionsadapt to the new working conditions and find creative ways to best engage each other. From remote workouts that our CEO and Co-Founder Paul Hadjy leads every day to regular virtual karaoke sessions, Horangi is doing what we can to build on the interpersonal relationships between Tigers.

Just this week, Paul was part of a Singapore Fintech Festival webinar panel of cybersecurity specialists from Crowdstrike, Seguru, and Gojek, where he covered the challenges that small businesses and financial service institutionsfinancial service institutions are facing amid this crisis and how these companies can adapt to a volatile and potentially booming cybercrime marketpotentially booming cybercrime market. 

On Horangi’s end, we also had our fair share of events, the first of which was a webinar by Steve Teo, our Director of Cloud Security Engineeringa webinar by Steve Teo, our Director of Cloud Security Engineering.

15 April Webinar Recap: Tackling the Biggest Blind Spots in Public Cloud Security

When tracing the causes of cloud breaches, businesses were shocked to find that the majority of the breaches can be attributed back to a basic configuration. In the session, Steve uncovered why these incidents happened to even some of the most digitally-advanced organizations, and whether these incidents will continue to happen. 

The blind spots in public cloud security stem for a number of factors, primarily:

• Organizations lack comprehensive visibility of their cloud footprintcomprehensive visibility of their cloud footprint. How do you protect what you don’t see?
• The myriad workload options and loose access controls make misconfigurations a common occurrence.

Steve concluded the session by sharing his insights on a robust cloud cybersecurity strategyrobust cloud cybersecurity strategy that encompasses security training, cloud security expertise, and good tooling — all of which help cover blind spots across cloud applications, data, platforms, accounts, and infrastructureacross cloud applications, data, platforms, accounts, and infrastructure.

Following Steve’s webinar, Horangi initiated a live training session in conjunction with our response to COVID-19our response to COVID-19.

A Live Training Session on 21 April — Work-From-Home Cybersecurity Explained

As the virus outbreak becomes more widespread, threat actors are creating COVID-19 related domains to support malicious campaigns. Understanding how to lower your security risks during this time is critical to stop cyber attacks. Led by Horangi Cyber Operations Consultant Cheng Lai Ki, the session helped the audience better understand the mindset of hackersunderstand the mindset of hackers and the vulnerabilities to pay attention to in this new home office network.

What can individuals do at home? Some best practices include:

• Pay attention to every detail and verify your information sources.
• Use antivirus, backup your data, and update your software.
• Change your home router's default password.
• Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and password managers.
• Cover your webcam and disable your mic when not in use.

For organizations, Cheng shared that it is critical to look more holistically at the people, processes, and technologyholistically at the people, processes, and technology behind this remote workforce. This includes identifying the key threats to Business Continuity and enforcing access control policies, as well as technical assessments to test the resilience of the applicationsresilience of the applications and infrastructure in this new environment.

Extended Software Trials In Response To COVID-19

For healthcare and healthtech organizations around Asia Pacific, Horangi is offering six months free on our Software-as-a-Service cybersecurity products. First of which is Warden, a cloud security product for organizations using the public cloudWarden, a cloud security product for organizations using the public cloud. The next is Trainer, a learning platform for organizations that require cyber awareness trainingTrainer, a learning platform for organizations that require cyber awareness training. 

It is no surprise that as we are facing a global crisis, hackers are taking advantage of this to exploit the increased panic and fear. Global phishing activity has gone up six-fold since February 2020, and it was reported that hackers attacked the US Department Health and Human Services in March. Organizations, especially those in healthcare, need all the support they can get to tide themselves over the crisis. We hope that our free offerings will help organizations to secure their cloud infrastructure and prevent their workers from being easy phishing targets. 

Horangi, just like everyone, has a responsibility to help with the greater good. This is a difficult time for everyone and we want to be a part of helping those on the frontline.

Don’t Miss Our Next Event!

As Singapore’s Circuit Breaker and the social distancing measures across the world stay in place, Horangi will continue doing what we canHorangi will continue doing what we can to help organizations build a strong security posture through this crisis.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event!