Singapore refreshes cyber strategy with new national tool to block malware and phishing sites
Senior Minister K Shanmugam, who is also Coordinating Minister for National Security and Home Affairs Minister, delivering the opening address at the Singapore International Cyber Week 2026 on Oct 13. (ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM)
Source: The Straits Times
A new national service will soon block Singapore users from accessing known phishing and malware sites amid a sharp rise in the number of infected computer systems here.
Called a protective domain name service (PDNS), it was announced on Oct 13 by Senior Minister K. Shanmugam as part of Singapore’s refreshed cybersecurity strategy to counter heightened cyber threats.
The shift is toward a proactive, AI-driven national defence model as threat actors have become faster and more sophisticated thanks to artificial intelligence.
“Singapore will seek to act earlier, act at national scale and act at the speed of the threat. This shift is an important part of Singapore’s cybersecurity strategy 2026 which we are launching today,” said Shanmugam, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs.
He was speaking at the opening of the 11th Singapore International Cyber Week at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre.
Shanmugam said Singapore’s updated cybersecurity strategy is broader than how national cyberdefence has been viewed so far.
“It will cover how we will strengthen our critical infrastructure in the wider cyberspace, build capabilities for AI and quantum, deepen our global partnerships, and invest in our cybersecurity ecosystem and workforce,” he said.
Expected to be rolled out in 2027, the new PDNS will be operated by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore’s (CSA) National Cybersecurity Command Centre, under the Online Criminal Harms Act.
The Act, which came into force in 2024, allows the authorities to ask individuals, companies and internet service providers to remove or block access to content that they suspect is being used to commit crimes, such as illegal gambling and money lending, drug-related offences, scams, and malicious cyber activities.
CSA said that the new service will have safeguards to “ensure the responsible exercise” of powers under the Online Criminal Harms Act.
The agency said that a “robust assessment and validation process” will be carried out before malicious websites are blocked, to reduce the risk of false positives and to ensure site blocking decisions can be accounted for.
Individuals or organisations affected by the service’s website blocking can seek recourse through the Act’s existing reconsideration and appeal processes.
Similar malicious-website blocking services have been implemented in Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In 2022, an inter-agency Counter Ransomware Task Force in Singapore recommended the use of PDNS as a form of “upstream defence” to prevent known malicious attackers from reaching internet users here.
This is because such attackers can trick users into downloading malware from malicious sites that can steal users’ company data or lock it up until a ransom is paid.
Navigating cyberspace safely is becoming more difficult. According to CSA’s latest Singapore Cyber Landscape report published in June, the number of malware-infected computer systems detected in Singapore more than doubled to 284,300 in 2025, from 117,300 infected systems detected in 2024.
“Singapore must raise the level of cybersecurity across our entire ecosystem,” said CSA on Oct 13, adding that such upstream protection is one of the key thrusts of the country’s refreshed cybersecurity strategy to counter more frequent and advanced threats.
The other pillars of the national strategy are: defending critical infrastructure; strengthening capabilities for AI and quantum technologies; and improving resilience through global partnerships.
Computer systems of critical infrastructure, or critical information infrastructure like those for power plants and telecommunications, are being increasingly targeted by hackers behind advanced cyberattacks that can stay undetected for long periods of time. These attackers are also called advanced persistent threat actors.
An attack in Singapore by one such group of hackers was revealed in July 2025. The country’s four major telcos were attacked by state-sponsored cyberespionage group UNC3886. The attack could have disrupted telecommunications and internet services had the attackers infiltrated further.
Other new safety measures include exploring cyber insurance pilots, as well as the police setting up a new Cyber Command unit in July to target scammers and cybercriminals before they reach Singaporeans.
“The intensified threat landscape underpins the need for a command centre with enhanced national capabilities to detect cyber risks earlier and accelerate operational responses,” CSA said, referring to its National Cybersecurity Command Centre.
Announced in 2024, the centre detects and neutralises cyber threats before they reach Singapore’s shores.
Besides operating the PDNS, the centre will also allow cyber defenders of critical information infrastructure to combine threat intelligence from various sources to facilitate the coordination of cyber operations at a national level.
The cyber defenders will also be able to detect malicious activities, especially those of advanced persistent threat actors, with a new proprietary threat detection system developed by the Ministry of Defence’s Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies. The centre is working with CSA to equip selected infrastructure owners with the systems.
Separate systems will also be deployed that use AI to track ongoing incidents and help cyberdefenders to develop operational assessments and plan their next actions. These will allow the National Cybersecurity Command Centre to coordinate faster responses to cyberincidents.
Wider adoption of AI and migration to quantum-safe systems are also part of Singapore’s refreshed strategy to strengthen protection.
Attackers are using AI tools to strike faster and at greater scale, while advancements in quantum computing threaten to undermine methods used today to encrypt data.