SINGAPORE, May 12 — The National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University are but the latest organisations to come under attack by cyber criminals. In recent years, several government ministries have also been the target of such sophisticated attacks.

In February this year, the Defence Ministry experienced its first cyber security breach when personal details of 850 national servicemen and staff at the Defence Ministry (Mindef) were stolen in a "targeted and carefully planned” cyber attack.

The breach of Mindef’s internal I-net system, which allows national servicemen and employees for their personal communication and internet surfing, was executed remotely over the internet.

No classified military data was lost but as a precaution, all other computer systems in Mindef and the Singapore Armed Forces were checked.

Earlier in 2014, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) IT system was breached.

No further details were made available, except that the Cyber Security Agency of Singpaore (CSA) said immediate steps were taken to "isolate the affected devices and appropriate security measures were implemented to further strengthen the network”.

The MFA also brought forward its plans to refresh its IT equipment as an added precautionary measure to ensure the integrity of its system.

In the same year, the former Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore reported that over 1,500 SingPass users’ IDs and passwords were potentially compromised and illegally accessed.

This led to the introduction of two-factor authentication for access to e-government services for greater security.

In response to very determined cyber attacks on the government’s IT systems in recent years, the government announced that public service officers will not be able to access the internet from their work computers from the middle of this year.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had said then that the government’s decision to ban internet access on work computers is "absolutely necessary” to fight off increasingly intense and sophisticated cyber threats.

The idea is to create an "air gap” between the web and government systems so hackers cannot infiltrate critical IT systems and bring them down. — TODAY