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Australia is currently developing its first cubesat, a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that is made up of multiples of 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm cubic units, designed to predict where bushfires are likely to start and those that will be difficult to contain.
The development will take place at The Australian National University’s (ANU) Mt Stromlo campus, led by remote-sensing expert Dr Marta Yebra and instrument scientist Dr Rob Sharp.
For this project, the ANU Institute for Space (InSpace) has awarded AU$1 million (approximately US$665k) to the team to build an optical system that can detect changes on the ground through infrared detectors on-board the satellite. The ANU team will partner with other researchers and the private sector to complete the project and launch the new satellite into low-Earth orbit.
The new satellite will accurately measure forest fuel load and vegetation moisture levels across Australia. The technology will be specifically tuned to detect changes in Australian plants and trees such as eucalyptus, which are highly flammable.
With this mission the team will receive high-resolution infrared images and data of fuel conditions that will help firefighters on the ground, said Dr Yebra, an InSpace Mission Specialist from the Fenner School of Environment and Society and the Research School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Environmental Engineering at ANU.
This infrared technology and data, which is not currently available, will help to target controlled-burns that can reduce the frequency and severity of bushfires, as well as their long-term impacts on Australia’s people, economy, and environment, she added.
This satellite will be the first in a constellation of remote sensing satellites that will monitor Australia’s environment. The constellation will be designed to have a positive impact on Australia’s property management, insurance, geological, agriculture and defence industries.
The team will gradually build up the capacity to monitor these bushfire risks in Australia. At first, they are focusing on long-term monitoring. Within the next five years, they plan to be able to monitor changes to the landscape and environment in real-time.
Pushing forward critical event management tech
The new solution is an excellent example of CEM technology. As regions and countries across the world battle wildfires and other natural calamities, Everbridge’s public warning solutions have been developed to significantly aid the mitigation of harm caused by such critical events.
Australia also recently deployed another CEM solution. OpenGov Asia reported that the operator of the suburban passenger rail network serving the city of Sydney in New South Wales launched a safety, security and emergency management platform called CriticalArc’s SafeZone. The system will help mitigate risks to staff and customers and strengthen its capacity to respond to incidents and emergencies.
SafeZone will put up to 2,500 front-line staff at more than 175 stations directly in touch with security control room teams, letting them summon immediate assistance at the touch of a button and receive an optimised response via their assigned smartphone.
This will also provide the operator with real-time situational awareness and a more complete picture of critical events, supporting security management functions, such as sending targeted alerts to specific individuals and groups and enabling control room operators to pinpoint the location of individuals needing help.
The Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Everbridge stated noted that the company’s proprietary Public Warning solution enables government organizations and public safety agencies to immediately connect with every person in an affected area during a critical event regardless of nationality, residency or mobile telephone handset type.
He also noted that Australia is a model example for population-wide alerting and emergency preparedness over the past decade, and the firm was honoured to support them on the evolution of their national system.
Critical event management has come to the fore with the pandemic. Forecasting, planning and management of critical events help organisations and authorities prevent disruption of life and damage to property.
Governments rely on several, specific systems for critical event management. Such programmes are essential to national well-being especially with the increase in natural disasters. But, more often than not, they operate in isolation of each other. According to world experts in Critical Event Management – Everbridge, this siloed approach can create duplication in information and processes, data contradictions and, when unchecked, could lead to loss of life and damages.
Everbridge’s Coronavirus Preparedness can make a significant difference in mitigating harm caused by the pandemic. They provide richer intelligence and correlating threats with locations of assets and people ensuring more rapid and comprehensive incident assessment and remediation.
With the pandemic forecast to be around for some time, planning responses to adverse events must continue alongside COVID-19 management. In light of this, it is expedient for governments to re-look at their systems, tools, processes and platforms they have in place to manage critical events.
APAC CEM WEBINAR: MANAGING MULTIPLE THREATS WITH AN INTEGRATED CEM PLATFORM
October 28, 2020 | 10:30AM IST | 1:00PM SG/HKT | 4:00PM AEST
REGISTER TODAY
Download Everbridge’s Whitepaper: MANAGING SEVERE WEATHER EVENTS DURING OTHER CRISES

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Australia Post is building a digital twin of its entire delivery network as part of continued efforts to use advanced analytics to detect and intervene on mail and parcel delivery problems.
The delivery network digital twin was revealed by Australia Post’s general manager of data science and strategy on a podcast earlier this month. Much of the work of the data science team that General Manager leads is well-documented.
The team, which was formed under finance but now sits in Post’s transformation and enablement function, is responsible for standing up several advanced analytics assets, including a data lake of sorts called Zoltar, named after the fortune-telling machine in the 1988 film Big.
More recently, it is responsible for Dexter, an “AI data bot” fed real-time data on mail movements that alert facility managers to potential issues.
The General Manager stated, “If your parcel is moving through the network and it’s due to be delivered today but we don’t see it get scanned onto a van by 6 am, the facility manager will start to receive emails from Dexter saying, ‘these are parcels we’re supposed to get out today, they’re somewhere in your network, go look for them’.”
However, it is the General Manager’s work on a multi-layered digital twin of the entire Post delivery network that is likely to be of substantial interest. Digital twins are digital copies of physical assets that are often used to plan and test future scenarios without impacting normal operations. The GM stated in the podcast that the big thing that the team is working on is a digital twin of the entire Australia Post network. That is huge.
The team is approaching it holistically. When people think of digital twins, they think of more scenario-based modelling but the team is thinking about it more like a grid, so three layers – an intervention layer, a forecasting layer and a simulation layer, and then interaction zones – an interaction with retailers, an interaction with ourselves in the network, and then an interaction with Australia Post customers.
AP’s data models have to fit within one of those grids, and then every model they develop now has to be part of what they are calling the digital twin ecosystem. “It has to have a life that contributes to that ecosystem, and then over time we will have eventually built a digital twin of the network,” the GM said.
The delivery network digital twin appears to be the second digital twin project at Australia Post. Having hinted at producing a virtual reality tool that could help posties complete difficult or unfamiliar delivery rounds back in 2018, a proof-of-concept emerged in October last year.
A professional services organisation said on its website that ‘Parcelbot’, as the proof-of-concept is called, also counted as a digital twin environment. It said it worked “in partnership with Australia Post” and used a mix of virtual reality technology, a virtual assistant AI technology an American multinational technology company and the Unreal gaming engine to create the tool.
The PoC: create a digital twin environment for posties to capture and surface important information along their delivery routes, including customer preferences like safe to leave a parcel unattended, locked gate, and protective dog.
The unlisted video accompanying the PoC shows how a postie can ‘look’ at an address and immediately see an overlay of information, such as recorded notes about the residents, how many parcels they receive, and how often missed delivery cards need to be left at that address.
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Eight Hong Kong universities are in line for grants totalling HK$165 million aimed at developing better virtual teaching methods, which are anticipated to become part of the “new normal” in coming years.
Online teaching was widely adopted amid the coronavirus pandemic as schools suspended face-to-face classes for months at a time to avoid infections. But the University Grants Committee (UGC), which funds the city’s public institutions of higher education, noted along with its Quality Assurance Council (QAC) on Thursday that they believed schools would continue to make use of virtual methods to enhance teaching and learning even after the pandemic ended.
The additional HK$165 million would be allocated to the eight universities funded by the committee to facilitate more systematic collaboration to promote the strategic development of virtual teaching and learning, a spokesman said.
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) recently announced that they welcomed the additional funding launched by the University Grants Committee (UGC) and the Quality Assurance Council (QAC) for universities to promote the development of virtual teaching and learning (VTL).
Over the years, PolyU has laid a solid foundation for VTL. In response to this new initiative, PolyU will actively propose innovative solutions, and continue to strive in acquiring more resources to promote the University’s development of VTL.
To address the long-term teaching and learning needs, our initial plans include: developing exemplary real-time delivery of online academic programmes and new paradigms of online teaching, as well as initiating VTL-related research.
In light of the ongoing pandemic situation, PolyU has been using different online teaching and learning platforms, while constantly upgrading its classroom facilities and providing training and technical support to staff and students to accommodate online and synchronous teaching. PolyU is also committed to digital transformation – some examples include building a teaching and learning centre that supplies e-learning resources and developing new online teaching solutions, such as using virtual reality (VR) technology in teaching and establishing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
PolyU has furthermore dedicated its efforts in developing several online science experiment platforms in recent years, including the newly launched “Borderless Lab 365”. The platform enables students to perform real-time science experiments remotely anywhere and anytime, thereby significantly improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning. This innovative platform is not only being used by the students of PolyU but is also being deployed by various secondary schools. Feedback from teachers and students has been positive, this is a good testament to the competence of PolyU in effectively combining technology with teaching.
The Deputy President and Provost of PolyU stated, “The UGC and QAC attach great importance to promoting VTL, which is in line with PolyU’s strategic development. We hope that with this additional funding in place, PolyU can secure more resources to accelerate the progress of VTL, so as to enhance the overall experience and effectiveness of teaching and learning.”
Another university that received funding was The University of Hong Kong (HKU). A press release from the university stated that they also welcome the move by the UGC and the QAC to provide additional funding for universities’ virtual teaching and learning (VTL) initiatives.
The Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) stated, “In the past 15 months, HKU has engaged deeply with VTL as first the social unrest and then the pandemic moved much teaching and learning online. Additional funding from UGC will enable us to intensify our efforts to build on the many innovative practices developed by teachers and students throughout the campus. It will help us ensure that VTL is fully integrated into our strategic plans for T&L as we navigate the ‘new normal’ in the 2020s.”
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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay (IIT-Bombay) have created an AI model to diagnose two species of malaria parasites by studying the changing trends of proteins in human blood. The project has been funded by the Department of Biotechnology.
According to a news report, the researchers recently developed proteomics technologies and made an artificial intelligence (AI)-based model in collaboration with three different hospitals across India. The model differentiates between two malaria parasites – P falciparum and P vivax – for better malaria diagnosis.
The researchers, from the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, collected blood samples for strains of P falciparum, P vivax, and dengue from across the country. Including the Medical College Hospital in Kolkata, Sardar Patel Medical College in Bikaner, and Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital in Mumbai, along with blood samples of healthy people. Then, the team created a dataset to train the AI model.
The dataset was analysed, and the researchers studied the protein levels from blood plasma against the severity of malaria to create quantifiable data. The majority of malaria cases in India come from the malaria-vulnerable population, including workers at construction sites in malaria-endemic regions. These are regions without a proper drainage system, leaving standing water for days to facilitate mosquito breeding.
Other parts of the malaria-vulnerable population include people without awareness of the harmful effects of the standing water in their localities during the malaria season. The main issues at the time of the disease are quick diagnostic aids, which describe the causative agent of the disease, a researcher from the study explained.
Currently, the team is focused on creating a prototype of a diagnostic kit so that the technology is available for the mass-detection of the disease. The kit can be used to compile these panels of proteins for diagnostics and prognostic purposes. Once this prototype is ready, the team will compare the kit with the currently used RDT kits. The study involves a panel of proteins, which will help in the reduction of false-positive and false-negative results.
Since 2000, India cut malaria cases by more than half and the number of malaria deaths by more than two-thirds. Ending malaria remains a top government priority. In 2016, India introduced its first National Framework for Malaria Elimination (2016-2030). In 2019, the government increased funding by more than 25% for the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme.
At present, malaria diagnosis is undertaken by manually studying the blood samples for the parasites which still has difficulty in determining the progress of the disease. In the case of malaria, P falciparum, P vivax and other species are not differentiable through RDTs and ideally need an expert eye along with intensive work of looking at 100 fields of blood smear using microscopy, the gold standard for malaria diagnosis, the researcher noted.
During malaria season, the number of cases is high, resulting in an increased burden on clinicians for manual diagnosis. If the diagnosis, along with the timely progression prediction from non-severe malaria cases to severe, before the development of clinical manifestations is made for clinicians, then the treatment can be specific and efficient.
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The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) will launch a digital asset trading platform in the second half of 2021 to allow trading on all types of digital token assets excluding cryptocurrencies. According to the SET, cryptocurrencies do not meet its product qualifications and could facilitate money laundering, while causing harm to the bourse’s image as a “high trust” exchange.
The Executive Vice-President of the SET stated that the digital asset platform will be similar to other popular e-commerce marketplaces but all products on SET’s platform will be digital token assets. He said tokens traded on the platform must meet at least one of three conditions. First, the token must have an underlying asset that investors can analyse on value. Second, it must be a valuable product that supports economic activities. Third, the product must have benefits to society and the environment.
The bourse also formulated a fully integrated distributed ledger technology (blockchain) and digital asset investment service in 2020 to link various digital asset exchanges, digital wallets and initial coin offering (ICO) portals in Thailand under one platform via a collaboration with an arm of a banking group in Thailand.
The bank will be responsible for sourcing and screening products entering the SET digital asset marketplace. The SET is looking to sign an agreement with other partners with an aim to achieve exponential growth through tech innovations and investments via its three arms.
The SET also has studied several ICO cases. Most projects being studied have the possibility of making profits in the future. In order to protect investors, the digital asset must meet at least one of the three conditions set by the SET but cryptocurrencies don’t meet any of them. Thus, they cannot be counted as the SET’s product even though some countries accept payments in cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies are currently used in some countries which are experiencing high inflation and currency fluctuations such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela as an equivalent of fiat money. Thailand has a strong economy. As inflation has remained low and the Bank of Thailand’s measures to keep the baht stable have worked in the past, the SET has no reason to support cryptocurrencies at the moment.
However, the Executive Vice-President said some stock exchanges in Europe currently provide cryptocurrency trading to attract digital asset investors before launching other digital token assets via their platforms.
He said one of the measures to prevent money laundering is to do “Know Your Customer” (KYC) with clients who open trading with the exchanges. KYC will filter and screen unusual investors who come to open trading accounts. Cryptocurrency is just one digital asset product among others, he added.
The bank and other ICO portal firms will search for new products and evaluate the ICO project before putting them on the trading platform. As each product has different characteristics, the bourse must employ experts from different areas to help screen the products.
Digital token assets can be many valuable things such as diamonds and title deeds.
The SET expects that the digital asset marketplace will grow faster than today’s stock market as it emerges in the 4.0 era, while the traditional markets were established in the 1.0 or 2.0 eras which had less technologies to facilitate trading. The stock and bond markets are also governed by regulations that are far less flexible than the digital asset law and usually need intermediaries such as brokers and banks to make transactions.
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As the world continues to navigate the waters of the new normal, unprecedented accelerated digital transformation continues to be the need of the hour. However, as organisations increasingly migrate to virtual operations and transactions, there is an urgent need to protect against potential breaches and cyber intrusions. Cybersecurity threats are indeed on the rise. Ransomware and cyber incidents have multiplied, adding to the already complex crisis management morass for many organisations. Executives are now looking for the best and most sustainable critical event management strategy, while also saving time and cost.
In recent months, cybersecurity has been inextricably embedded into operations frameworks of organisations, in both the government and the private sector. Reports showed that companies’ budgets for these systems have spiked by more than 50% and towards the end of 2020, these security solutions were anticipated to form as much as half of the overall funding. Despite this, several agencies are uncertain as to how to adapt these tools and solutions. In the absence of adequate precaution, planning and programmes, many organisations are left stranded and exposed when hit by an unexpected critical event.
Such eventualities can be addressed by setting up a robust critical event management programme (CEM). This was the essence of the OpenGovLive! Virtual Breakfast Insight: Strengthening Cybersecurity and Emergency Preparedness: Enhancing Readiness, Response and Recovery.
On the 21 January, OpenGov Asia, in collaboration with Everbridge, hosted the OpenGov Live! Virtual Breakfast Insight for senior digital executives from both the public and the private sectors in the Philippines. The event focussed on establishing strong cyber resilience in organisations with effective risk management tools to be fully prepared for managing crises and cyber risks.
The role of critical event management in upgrading work systems

Mohit Sagar, OpenGov Asia’s Group Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, opened the session with a short introduction of the participants and the topic. He highlighted the importance of having a reliable incident management programme to ward off potential data security risks.
The current scenario in many organisations in both the public and private sectors is a delicate balancing act. He painted a picture of a group of ballerinas in a difficult balancing pose. Like these ballerinas, organisations have to balance technology, customers, employees, regulations and stakeholders in the precarious new normal. If any one of these components fail or shift, the whole construction can crash.
This tightrope act works well when everything is in equilibrium. However, an imbalance, misstep or unmanaged tension can have catastrophic results.
Reflecting on how the world responded to the pandemic, Mohit then questioned the readiness of the organisations in dealing with cyber risks and their continuity plans. Lacunae were painfully evident last year with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology did help manage the pandemic in terms of being able to work from home but was only a temporary solution.
Prior to the pandemic, the need to consider the impact of potentially critical events was more of a theoretical pursuit and organisations plodded along with traditional plans in place. However, when the crisis hit, organisations were floundering, ill-prepared for such a massive disruption. Significant changes were urgently required to just stay afloat.
Many organisations were able to turn things around and somewhat mitigate the impact of the pandemic. But the fact is, not all organisations were able to come out unscathed, and the reality is that there is still a lot to be done to upgrade work systems and processes to accommodate the new normal.
The solution, Mohit said, is not to hope for an auspicious year to get through 2021, but to learn from past mistakes. There is a need to find out what went wrong, develop a better understanding of organisational cyber risks and determine to set a robust resilience plan in place. From this, organisations can incorporate changes in their operation models, retrain employees and most importantly, invest in strategic tools like a critical event management system.
Technology is at our fingertips and it proved to be the saving grace last year. But resilience must not be equated with being able to keep the business running through remote methods.
Mohit emphasised that putting up event management systems must not be shouldered by organisation management alone. Operational resilience is tied to effective communication that is well-received on both ends – employers and employees, management and staff. To do this, ensuring seamless communication is key and becomes crucial in crises. It may come at a price, but in the end, it must be done.
According to Mohit, creating an operational resilience plan is not an easy task. It relies heavily on cybersecurity expertise and professional critical event management systems. Therefore, it is expedient for agencies to work with the right partners to ensure that they have the best strategy in managing upcoming cyber risks.
Setting up an adaptive event management programme suited for each organisation

Sonia Arista, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Everbridge, furthered the discussion after Mohit. She briefly shared her background in information security management and introduced Everbridge.
Everbridge is a global critical events management company that strives to keep businesses running continuously through any events that affect the workforce and supply chain, such as IT disruptions, and to maintain visibility and communications between employees and leaders on events that might affect the business.
Working in information security program management means that half of the time, Sonia needs to oversee product development as well as operational areas. The other half of the time, she is responsible for maintaining the security of Everbridge’s employees’ information and environments and maintaining a standard of security.
This can be challenging for several reasons. First, full visibility in the context of what is happening is difficult to achieve. Second, determining the level of severity of the events and the parties is not straightforward. Thirdly, how to notify relevant people, what messaging is needed, it is a one-way communication or is feedback required can make response complicated.
In short, identifying the appropriate response plan to the event and putting it into action is the name of the game. She also felt that assessment post-crisis is important to determine areas of improvement and potentially developing guidelines for other members in the industry.
To address this, there must be an adaptive critical event management programme integrated within operations models. However, Sonia was quick to acknowledge that deploying a CEM programme is no walk in the park. None the less, the rationale is that the more time spent to impact-proof operations, assets and people the better the resilience during critical events.
Sonia went on to explain her take on simplifying and unifying critical event management. To streamline the whole process, Everbridge views 4 factors to be at the core:
- Assessing an incident
- Locating what is happening, identify stakeholders and assets impacted
- Acting and responding to the event – inform, notify, rally, collaborate, mitigate, fix, and recover.
- Analysing the performance on the course of the incident, and to offer possible improvements on the processes
According to Sonia, there are instances where organisations need to manage multiple crises. Events can happen in tandem and are often caused by multiple factors such as supply chain disruption, disease outbreaks, severe weather, etc. All of these elements together contribute information to the events, and by applying the four core factors mentioned above, an organisation can fully mitigate and resolved any event.
Different business models will have different focus areas and critical event management takes different forms for organisations across various sectors. For example, companies with multiple factories will want to focus on physical access control to maintain standards in their facility, weather services for health systems to predict patient influx caused by natural disasters and threat intel engines in cybersecurity. She underscored this point by showing a list of partners that collaborated with systems such as Everbridge to bring comprehensive intel and context in remediation planning.
Sonia summarised her presentation by acknowledging that there are various programmes that an organisation can utilise. It all depends on which key areas that a specific agency would want to focus on so that the proper critical incident management can be deployed.
Enhancing cybersecurity measures through critical events management

Following Sonia’s presentation, Charlotte Wood, Director of Policy and Awareness of Cybersecurity at New South Wales Government shared her experience with the participants. Her department is responsible for setting standards and providing leadership in cybersecurity and affects all 120 entities in the NSW Government that consist of approximately 400,000 employees.
According to Charlotte, there are 3 pillars of cybersecurity: 1) Confidentiality of digital information held, 2) Availability of the information accessed digitally by people whenever it’s needed and 3) Maintaining the integrity of the digital system and services – data must not be modified improperly, whether maliciously or accidentally
Charlotte explained that the initial question to be answered is: what is an agency trying to protect when integrating cybersecurity measures. As with most, if not all workplaces, protecting the confidentiality of data is paramount, as well as keeping such information intact and readily available. In and of themselves, these two components are not sufficient. There must be workplace safeguards to ensure the integrity of data and that malicious activities do not compromise it.
One way to balance these three key components is by applying a risk-based approach and the NSW Government uses this methodology. With their standard, they address the level of risk in 3 main areas: 1) Technology and Infrastructure – in protecting their digital system and services, 2) Procession and Organisation – the standards set and 3) People and Culture – the employees’ understanding of cybersecurity
However, more critical than these 3 areas is the risk and impact of the events to the people of NSW. The risk level dictates how they prepare for the attacks, and how they prioritise the different attacks. The risk-based approach has allowed the NSW government to have a standard framework that will work in different agencies with different needs.
Mitigating the impact of critical events does not end with a cyber risk approach. It is a holistic process that improves on key aspects of the workforce including retraining employees. She added that while the notion that cyber threats can be prevented is a myth, agencies can mitigate impacts by training people and by putting up a solid cybersecurity framework.
Charlotte concluded her talk by reiterating that investment in a cybersecurity programme is a continuous cycle. As data breaches become more sophisticated, systems must be improved and defences against these threats must be fortified. Organisations can do this through prevention and simulation of potential threats.
Polling questions
After the engaging discussion by the speakers, participants participated in polling questions and discussions regarding their risk management and cybersecurity protocols, as well as the challenges that they see in this area.
When asked about their key concerns around cybersecurity in their organisations, nearly half (49%) of the attendees voted for employee education in IT security.
A delegate from the Department of Energy said that educating employees is one of the major hurdles that his agency is experiencing. The reason is that most employees fail to grasp the importance of cybersecurity and because of this, the responsibility is left in the hands of IT professionals.
An executive from the Department of National Defense shared the same sentiment. She noted that with their current remote work programme, educating employees and enforcing security policies has become more difficult.
When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of cybersecurity architecture, two thirds (66%) of the participants said that they do this by looking at the ability of the organisation to respond effectively to impending cyber threats. Data protection, threats response and effective mitigation are their main measurements.
Interestingly, 20% of the participants stated they did not have any measurement and wanted to learn from the others. One participant from the government said they are interested to find ways to measure this area in their cybersecurity policies.
The third question was on how the participants rate the level of preparedness of their organisation to cyber threats. Few were unsure and some admitted that they are not well prepared. 45% of the participants felt that they are prepared but they have doubts if it can withstand infiltration.
The fourth question asked the participants on their biggest challenge for accelerating their response to IT incidents, a large portion, mostly government officials, voted it to be the lack of skilled Cybersecurity or IT professionals. They experienced budget constraints and felt policies in hiring these professionals were difficult to follow.
For well over half of the delegates (60%), the lack of skilled Cybersecurity/ IT Professionals is the biggest challenge they see in boosting their cybersecurity protocols. Others felt information overload and alert fatigue to be challenging since IT incidents involved not only cybersecurity but also operations.
The last question was on how participants’ security operations are currently driven. For the most part, delegates said they were compliance and incident driven but now realise the importance of risk-based or intelligence-driven parameters and were working towards it.
Conclusion
The session came to a close with Sonia stressing the need to establish a critical incident management programme in order to ramp up cybersecurity in the overall organisational framework.
She re-emphasised how different elements contribute to an incident and that it is important to look beyond the confines of technology. Keep educating and spreading awareness, pick up intelligence from suppliers and partners that are helpful for the organisation in responding rapidly to events in an automated consistent fashion.
Sonia thanked the participants for their wonderful insights and contributions and encouraged them to reach out to her team and her on their CEM journey.
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Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) launched its new FinTech Centre located at the InnoCentre in Kowloon Tong to accelerate cross-industry innovation and forge the new era of financial services. This reflects HKSTP’s ongoing commitment to reinforcing Hong Kong’s global leadership as an international financial hub through innovation and technology.
FinTech Centre is the latest addition to the evolving InnoCentre and a key pillar in HKSTP’s growing Fin+Tech ecosystem. The close-knit ecosystem brings financial institutions, regulators and academics, together with fintech startups and companies focusing on extensive R&D in Hong Kong and globally.
The CEO at HKSTP stated that fintech is a strategic focus for HKSTP. Their vision is to nurture the best possible Fin+Tech ecosystem, which has seen rapid growth in recent years. The FinTech Centre’s launch is a new chapter in Hong Kong’s path to be a world-leading fintech hub. Our fintech companies will create the advanced technologies necessary for the financial sector to build a new era of financial services in Hong Kong, Greater Bay Area and beyond.
The Centre will provide a focal point for different stakeholders to collaborate with fintech companies and co-create projects for the financial sector that harness advanced technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cybersecurity and data analytics. The Centre will also serve as a base for business matching, a soft-landing for overseas fintech companies, talent nurturing, laboratory and proof-of-concept trials.
The launch is one of several HKSTP-led initiatives to drive fintech collaboration and co-creation in 2021.
Building Next-Generation Banking Services
HKSTP is also rolling out its Banking Virtual Lab which aims to accelerate fintech innovation. The virtual lab hosts synthetic banking data and relevant APIs in partnership with financial institutions. This will make it easier for developers and banks to work together to rapidly develop, test and validate new APIs and solutions against synthetic data.
As the lab’s first partner, a bank, has already contributed synthetic data and will create a sandbox to collaborate with innovators to address specific business pain points.
The CEO of the bank stated that it welcomes new initiatives that will drive innovation in fintech; supporting HKSTP in the development of its Banking Virtual Lab by contributing synthetic banking data, with the aims of creating a cross-industry ecosystem on the data platform, deepening collaboration with fintech companies, and accelerating the speed of development and success rate of these collaborations.
The collective initiative will help drive the continued development of Hong Kong’s banking industry and generate more opportunities to work with fintech companies on the co-creation of customer-centric products that meet the evolving needs of our customers.
Fast-Tracking Corporate Innovation
Another major initiative is the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) Accelerator under HKSTP’s Global Acceleration Academy (GAA), announced at the Asian Financial Forum on 19 January 2021. This will fast-track corporate innovation across the BFSI sectors and address the sectors’ critical pain points by developing solutions through co-creation.
The Accelerator will match financial corporates with HKSTP’s 1000-strong network of technology ventures to enhance operational efficiency, customer experience, wealth management, regulation and compliance.
The Accelerator is supported by industry leaders including the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) via the HKMA-HKSTP Fin+Tech Collaboration Platform, Insurance Authority, InvestHK, Hong Kong Association of Banks (HKAB) and the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers (HKIB). It is carried out in collaboration with 17 BFSI corporates.
Fintech Innovation Hub
Another key development is the establishment of a new Fintech Innovation Hub (FIH) at the FinTech Centre. A collaboration between Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), HKMA and HKSTP, the FIH will serve as a neutral ground for collaboration between financial institutions, technology companies, corporations, universities and government bodies for idea exploration, proof of concept and prototype development, technology testing as well as education and demo purposes.
The Chief Operating Officer and acting Co-CEO at ASTRI stated that as Hong Kong’s largest applied science and technology research institute and having fintech as one of our focus areas of application, research and development, ASTRI is constantly finding ways to benefit the entire financial industry and help drive the sector’s growth into a new era.
The establishment of the FIH marks another milestone and the agency looks forward to an even closer collaboration with HKMA, HKSTP and other stakeholders to support and promote the continued growth of our thriving fintech ecosystem.
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The Northern Territory Government has awarded a $64.4 million tender for the Client Management Systems Alignment program, known as the Care System, to improve the care and protection of children in the state.
The Care System will enable different and necessary government agencies such as Police, Territory Families, Housing and Communities, Health, Education and Attorney General to access the same information, create the one case file and share critical information to best manage each child’s specific case.
The region’s Minister for Territory Families and Urban Housing said the new Care System will give frontline staff in child protection and youth justice the necessary tools to better protect vulnerable children.
The Minister stated, “We want to make sure all Northern Territory children have the best start in life. A total of 72% of Territory Families, Housing and Communities’ core business is recorded outside of our approved computer system which is more than 25 years old.”
A UK-based tech firm and local a Territory business IT company have been selected for the project, which will provide a modern digital tool to assist frontline workers in child protection, youth justice and service provision for the Northern Territory’s most vulnerable children. A local Territory digital company has been selected to undertake work on this project with a dedicated local team.
The Minister for Corporate and Digital Development said the IT overhaul is one of the biggest the NT has ever undertaken and will be supported by specialist IT practitioners from a range of local Territory digital businesses.
He noted that the IT firm has more than 25 years’ experience delivering information technology solutions and services in the Northern Territory, with a local team dedicated to this project.
The Care System will provide child protection and youth justice case management solution to equip the Northern Territory Government with a holistic view of the child and increase opportunities for early intervention.
The Care System will also enable frontline staff to access important information anytime and will improve the connection between non-government, private service providers, the community and the government to access and update information related to child wellbeing.
The project came about after the Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory highlighted the limitations in current processes that support child protection and youth justice. In response, the Territory Government invested $64.4 million into the Care System to facilitate better information sharing and coordination.
The Minister for Territory Families and Urban Housing also noted that the creation of the Care System and the delivery of the program is all about it being based on the child. The NT government wants to make sure they are keeping up-to-date information on vulnerable families, so they can assist quickly and proactively.
The program is scheduled for completion in late 2022 and will improve the way Territory Families, Housing and Communities approaches child protection and youth justice, through a child-centric approach to systems and service delivery.
According to another article, The Department of Corporate and Digital Development (DCDD) is leading the project, formally known as the client management system alignment (CMSA) program, on behalf of Territory Families.
DCDD (then the Department of Corporate and Information Services) went looking for a new system in 2018 in response to the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the NT. The Royal Commission identified systemic problems with the territory’s approach to child protection and youth justice, including limitations with several underpinning systems of record.
Systems of concern included the CCIS and the integrated offender management system (IOMS), neither of which ‘talked’ each other, as well as the police real-time online management system (PROMIS). The government said it expects the new Care system to improve “information sharing and coordination to ensure we are better protecting vulnerable children”.