Singapore and the United Kingdom today signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) on Cybersecurity Capacity Building, in conjunction with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s visit to London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
The MoC was signed by Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Government of Singapore, and The Right Honourable Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The signing ceremony was held at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The MoC builds on and extends the close cooperation already existing between the two countries under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cybersecurity Cooperation, signed between the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) and the UK Cabinet Office in 2015. The present MoC will see both countries cooperating to deliver cybersecurity capacity building programmes to Commonwealth Member States for a two-year period beginning September 2018. In addition, the UK will also actively participate in Singapore’s ASEAN Cyber Capacity Programme that was launched in 2016.
Mr David Koh, Chief Executive of CSA said, “The signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation is testament to the excellent ongoing cybersecurity cooperation between Singapore and the United Kingdom. It presents an opportunity for both countries to share expertise and resources to offer a coordinated and robust cybersecurity capacity building programme to our partners in the Commonwealth. We are also delighted to have the UK on board the ASEAN Cyber Capacity Programme1 and look forward to enhancing cybersecurity awareness and capabilities in the region.
1 Launched in 2016, Singapore’s S$10 million ACCP takes a modular, multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder approach to building cyber capabilities in ASEAN Member States across both technical and policy areas. Since 2016, close to 140 Director-level ASEAN participants have benefited from the ACCP.