Connectivity cloud enables governments to gain control of growing digital services

Indonesia’s GovTech Procurement, a division under Telkom Indonesia, expects transparency, efficiency and accessibility of its national digital commerce platform.

The platform aims to promote local products and support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country in accessing government contracts, but having to manage the security and seamless integration of over 600 tenant websites proved to be challenging.

This is why GovTech Procurement leveraged Cloudflare’s Everywhere Security solution to centralise encryption and site security for its tenant websites.

The solution included web application firewall (WAF), to block bots and DDoS attacks, and protect applications and APIs, said Cloudflare ASEAN’s Vice President, Kenneth Lai.

Besides security management, GovTech Procurement also saw performance gains and cost savings. With websites running faster, they could deliver services more efficiently, he added.

The state of public sector’s cybersecurity readiness

Costly legacy hardware replacements, poor end user experience and latency issues, as well as the lack of visibility over attack surfaces, emerged as the top challenges facing public sector organisations, according to Cloudflare’s Asia Pacific Cybersecurity Readiness Study 2024.

These challenges are exacerbated by poor cybersecurity preparedness, characterised by a lack of talent, limited access to cybersecurity solutions, as well as the evolving threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI), Lai added.

The stakes of managing cybersecurity have become higher today, as more citizens connect with their governments digitally, he noted. At the same time, public sector bodies are operating in a volatile cyber threat landscape, characterised by increasing cyberattacks and high web traffic.

“Concurrently, many public sector organisations continue to operate under hybrid or remote work arrangements for employees and contractors, straining legacy IT systems and presenting new security risks.

“As workstreams migrate to the cloud, organisations need to reduce costs and complexity by modernising and consolidating legacy systems by opting for new hybrid, multi-cloud architectures,” he added.

The complexity of hybrid, multi-cloud deployment may further increase the attack surface and risk of cyber attacks.

Taking a platform approach to unify cybersecurity silos

Lai made the case for organisations to take a platform approach to cybersecurity, as such an approach is cost effective and robust.

Cloudflare’s Everywhere Security, also known as the Connectivity Cloud, consolidates the security services for apps and networks under one control plane and interface.

This reduces vendor sprawl, noted Lai, which occurs when organisations have too many software application redundancies across departments.

With unified dashboards and reporting, organisations can have visibility over different security domains, block attacks spanning every domain, as well as lock down the entire network with robust Zero Trust policies – which simplifies management across every attack surface.

Recently, Cloudflare commissioned a global consulting firm, Forrester, to conduct an independent cost-benefit analysis of Cloudflare’s Everywhere Security.

Some key findings included a 238 per cent returns-on-investment (ROI), with payback in less than six months; 29 per cent improvement in security team’s efficiency due to stronger protection, consolidated services, faster incident response, and centralised visibility; as well as a reduced risk of breach by up to 25 per cent.

Cloudflare’s coverage outreach currently spans more than 330 cities in over 120 countries, interconnecting with around 13,000 networks globally, including major internet service providers (ISPs), cloud services, and enterprises, he shared.

How public sector organisations can get started

To get started with a unified platform approach to cybersecurity, Lai recommended security teams conduct a thorough audit of their existing security architecture.

The audit will identify gaps, inefficiencies, and areas where consolidation and integration could help to reduce complexity and cost.

“A zero-trust approach would work well in this regard,” he added. Zero-trust is an IT security model that assumes threats are present both inside and outside a network.

“Sometimes, less is more,” said Lai, underlining the usefulness of streamlining existing cybersecurity architecture through secure access service edge (SASE).

SASE is an emerging architectural framework which combines security and networking services on one cloud platform.

For organisations, this means not having to give up their existing investments, tackling ongoing challenges with talent, as well as improving cybersecurity outcomes, he noted.

Security teams should then understand what the SASE platform is capable of, and how it can integrate and operate harmoniously with their existing solutions, he emphasised.

Internal culture

Lai also highlighted the importance of internal culture.

“Cybersecurity must not exist in a silo,” he said, adding that senior leaders have the responsibility to emphasise “cybersecurity as a critical mission” and implement best practices across staff, suppliers and clients.

He recommended organisations invest time to enhance the security culture across the entire organisation.

“Strong understanding and awareness should be the first line of defense in enhancing preparedness, even more so than any solution or software,” he explained.

“By building a strong security culture, chief information security officers (CISOs) will no longer have to wait for incidents to occur to make the business case for boosting preparedness.

“Instead, they will be empowered to proactively mitigate the fallout from any breaches or incidents that might befall their organisation,” he concluded.

Cloudflare recently conducted a study among almost 4,000 cybersecurity professionals from 14 markets across the Asia-Pacific region. Download the report "Navigating the New Security Landscape: Cloudflare Asia Pacific Cybersecurity Readiness Survey 2024" by clicking here.