PUBLISHED ONOctober 21, 2025 5:45 AMBYSean LerSingapore is moving away from its traditional approach of keeping matters of classified threat intelligence and national security solely within government agencies.
Instead, it will now share classified threat intelligence with owners of selected critical infrastructure in Singapore, announced Coordinating Minister for National Security K Shanmugam at the opening of the Singapore International Cyber Week (SICW) on Tuesday (Oct 21).
Shanmugam, who is also Minister for Home Affairs, stated that the move to share classified threat intelligence with organisations in critical sectors such as telecommunications, energy and finance is necessary, so as to "level the playing field" between threat actors and defenders, and "turn the tide" against the former.
"Most owners of critical infrastructure are private sector companies whose primary job is to ensure the delivery of essential services — water, power and transportation and so on.
"They are not specialists in cybersecurity. Yet, they are up against the best-in-class, state-backed cyber threat actors," explained Shanmugam, who also cautioned that the level of sophistication today means some attacks will succeed.
"Therefore, we will need to build up resilience, but we also need to be prepared that for a period, some operations will be degraded because some attacks will succeed," he said.
To do this, the Government will equip critical infrastructure owners will the tools and capabilities to deal with advanced persistent threats (APTs), and even partner selected ones to conduct threat hunting and "red-teaming" exercises simulating potential attacks.
The moves to strengthen Singapore's cyber defences comes amid increased APT activity, including attacks by cyber espionage group UNC3886, which was found to have targeted critical infrastructure here.
Recognising that attacks can come from anywhere in the world, including being "routed through a number of intermediate nodes internationally", Shanmugam stated that Singapore will also continue to build trust between countries and strengthen the rules-based international cyber order.
He cited a 2024 case where the police and Internal Security Department had identified six foreign nationals operating out of Singapore who were suspected of being involved in malicious cyber activities.
They were believed to have hacked into various overseas websites to obtain information on a significant number of individuals, as well as target foreign governments and their data.
Four of these individuals have been charged and their cases are now before the Courts, said Shanmugam.
"With trust, countries can exchange information and support each other in times of crisis.
"Without it, countries will be hesitant to share intelligence. And that will leave all of us exposed, and weaken our collective defence efforts," he noted.
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