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OpenGov Asia is pleased to invite you to an exclusive OpenGovLive! Virtual Breakfast Insight aimed at imparting knowledge on modern application security and best practices to modernise digital delivery of government services efficiently and securely.
In today’s fast-paced and digitalised world, governments often struggle to provide the digital experiences that citizens expect. Like any consumer in the market, user’s expectations and demands for government agencies to provide faster, better and more intuitive services are ever-increasing.
While no two digital transformation journeys are the same, it is evident that APIs have become the foundational building block and element for any organisation undergoing digital transformation.
With the rapid increase in government applications and ever-growing need for data and connectivity, many agencies across central and local government are collaborating through open APIs.
APIs are more than a tool for integration; they enable easier adoption of new technologies and new business models, keeping up with citizen demands at a higher velocity, and packaging useful data for reuse across government systems to improve citizen experiences.
Yet, such digitalisation and new application architectures have also created additional blind spots in perimeter security. As much as software application transforms government, it also expands its potential attack surface as APIs are exposed over a network.
Bake Security into the Process and Tools
In the old IT days, network infrastructure for a security architect could be straightforward; anything outside the firewall would be considered a red zone and everything inside would be the safe zone.
Today, there are no more zones or boundaries. Instead, with APIs, IT extends beyond on-premise infrastructure and firewall to different cloud environments, mobile devices and various internal or external sources and locations.
This makes the security infrastructure protecting applications no longer under the control of in-house or a local administrator. Therefore, most organisations are struggling to provide consistent security across multiple application infrastructure and architecture.
Open data and its sharing standards are often inconsistent and fragmented, and with sensitive and regulated data passing through APIs to interconnect the digital entities, there is no margin for an error for the public sector.
It is crucial to implement security in the early stages of application development. Security must be set as a priority and to be built in at the infrastructure level to control access and protect data as it flows to and from different systems, applications and people.
Make Security a Feature, Not a Barrier
Security is often regarded as a bottleneck in the overall development process and a painful extra step that must be dealt with. Security will sometimes be inconsistent at best and often perceived as “somebody else’s problem”.
Rather than taking an eye off the ball and making security everyone’s problem, it is important to provide appropriate guidance and tools such as templated policies to align the applications with security requirements right from the start so that application security can be made a seamless part of workflows.
Moreover, with the application hosted across the cloud environment and on-premises, it is critical to have a centralised point of control to manage crucial components like API keys or user credentials in the hands of operations or security team, without causing any delays in applications getting deployed in production.
The core question about the application security then becomes: how can we bridge the gap between speed and security (DevOps and SecOps) to provide seamless services without stopping the mandate?
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This is a great way to share new knowledge in new normal. Very useful information and hope to attend next event
Financial and Development Supervisory Agency
Good event, good perspective from speakers and delegates. We learnt many new methods and gained a lot of knowledge from this session
Geospatial Information Board
It is a very interesting meeting, fruitful discussion
Statistics Indonesia
© 2024 OpenGov Asia – CIO Network Pte Ltd.
Scott is a Solutions Architect at NGINX and F5, helping customers across Australia and New Zealand be successful in their software deployments. Scott focuses on emerging technology in DevOps, modern apps and automation, with particular interest and vast experience in APIs, service mesh, continuous deployment and microservices.
Prior to joining F5, Scott was a solution architect at Red Hat. Scott has a long history of experience in Information Technology. He is passionate about open source technology and open data systems. He is currently the co-host and convenor of several community-based technology meetups, where he shares knowledge and draws inspiration from the people he meets.
NGINX, now a part of F5, Inc., is the company behind the popular open source project, NGINX. We offer a suite of technologies for developing and delivering modern applications. Together with F5, our combined solution bridges the gap between NetOps and DevOps, with multi‑cloud application services that span from code to customer.
Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.
CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.
Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.
Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.
Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.
SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.
HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices.
IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.
