The global technology landscape is fracturing at an unprecedented pace, and with it, the foundations of cybersecurity are being rewritten. What began as an effort to secure supply chains has evolved into a race for digital sovereignty - a world where nations are deliberately building self-contained technology ecosystems that no longer speak to one another.
In this new digital era, fragmentation is not just ransomware or data breaches, may be the next major cyber threat. In conversation with iTNews Asia, Teo Xiang Zheng, Vice President of Advisory at Ensign InfoSecurity, discusses how the world’s race for digital sovereignty is fuelling a new kind of cyber risk and why resilience, not deterrence, must become the cornerstone of modern cybersecurity strategy.
“We are now seeing a ‘digital iron curtain’ taking shape. When systems stop talking to each other, trust erodes and that mistrust itself becomes an operational risk,” Teo said.
The new geography of technology
From Russia’s Sovereign Internet Law to China’s domestically built HarmonyOS and Kylin Linux, governments are doubling down on digital sovereignty, so as to reduce reliance on foreign technology and assert control over their digital ecosystems.
For multinational enterprises, especially in Asia Pacific, this fragmentation presents a unique challenge. Many now operate across incompatible systems running Western cloud infrastructure on top of Eastern hardware, effectively inheriting the risks of both.
“When your systems span competing ecosystems, even basic interoperability can no longer be taken for granted,” Teo noted. “A single misconfiguration or delayed patch in one environment can cascade into another, turning fragmentation into a live operational risk rather than a geopolitical talking point.”
Why traditional deterrence fails
Teo said traditional cyber deterrence, built on penalties, attribution, and retaliation no longer works in this fragmented reality.
“You can’t deter what you can’t attribute. Attackers aren’t afraid of penalties, they thrive on persistence and disruption. Deterrence through punishment simply doesn’t work anymore,” he added.
He explained that attackers today operate through layers of proxies, affiliates, and initial access brokers. Attribution is murky, and punishment has little impact when adversaries operate across jurisdictions that don’t cooperate. He also pointed to the recent Qilin ransomware attack in Japan.
“While the investigation didn’t explicitly trace the breach to an access broker, the pattern aligns with what we’re seeing across Asia where ransomware affiliates buy or rent access to victim networks on the dark web.”
Resilience - Core of modern cyber defense
As deterrence fades, resilience has emerged as the new organising principle of cybersecurity. The premise is no longer to prevent every breach, but to design systems that can absorb, contain, and recover from inevitable attacks.
A modern resilience strategy, Teo explained, focuses on three critical pillars:
● Intelligence-driven operations - Real-time threat data, AI-assisted monitoring, and continuous patching enable adaptive defence.
● Zero trust and supply-chain vigilance - Organisations must vet and monitor third-party vendors rigorously, diversify their technology dependencies
● Collaboration as capability - Sharing intelligence through regional platforms, participating in joint exercises, and contributing to open-standard frameworks.
Resilience isn’t about deterring the enemy, it's about outlasting and outlearning them.
- Teo Xiang Zheng, Vice President of Advisory, Ensign InfoSecurity
Given the diversity of regulations and technologies, he advocates for a federated but aligned governance model, where regional entities adapt to local regulations while following a shared global risk language, escalation process, and recovery standard.
“The best governance models treat security as culture, not paperwork. When everyone knows what to do in a crisis, consistency follows naturally,” Teo added.
As traditional metrics like blocked attacks or patch counts no longer define success, Teo recommended organisations to measure readiness - how often response plans are rehearsed and refined; risk-based protection - whether security resources are aligned with critical business services and continuity - how effectively operations are maintained during an incident.
If enterprises could redesign their cybersecurity function from scratch, Teo believes they should start with resilience as the foundation and not compliance.
Such resilient systems would feature containment by design, redundant technology paths, and operational flexibility to maintain critical services under stress. Ultimately, cybersecurity would sit alongside innovation, enabling trust and business continuity rather than constraining them, he added.
