Singapore's public sector has reported a two percent rise in data security incidents, likely fuelled by digital transformation across its agencies, the country's Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO) said in its annual update of the government's data protection report.
The report said that there were 182 government data incidents in 2022, compared to 178 in the previous fiscal year. However, the report added, none of these were "severe or posed any significant impact on the agency or affected individuals".
SNDGO attributed the increase to more data-sharing amongst government agencies amid continued digital transformation efforts in the public service.
It further added that the number of incidents categorised as medium in severity decreased from 52 to 46 in fiscal year 2022.
The annual update report, released yearly since 2019 consists of recommendations after review by a public sector committee on data security practices and policies.
It aims to enhance transparency on "how the Government uses and secures citizen data".
As part of various initiatives towards data security practices, the Singapore government launched a central privacy toolkit in March, that allows officers to apply "privacy enhancing techniques" to datasets, while retaining the data's value.
This had allowed data to be shared within and outside of the public sector in "secured" manner.
SNDGO said the toolkit is currently used by more than 80 government agencies.
The government has also completed the roll out of technical measures to enhance the logging and monitoring of data transactions to detect high-risk or suspicious activity - such as data loss protection tool to prevent accidental loss or unauthorised disclosure of sensitive data from government networks, systems, and devices.
Future plans
SNDGO has hinted on two more ongoing tech initiatives yet to be completed in the next fiscal year along with its efforts to reduce the government's surface attack area by minimising collection, retention, access, and download of data.
The government will set up a central account management (CAM) solution to strengthen account management and user access rights.
As of April 1, 2023, 63 percent of eligible Government IT systems have been onboarded to CAM, SNDGO said.
Following the launch of new guidelines on artificial intelligence (AI) and commercial Large Language Model (LLM) applications in May this year, SNDGO said the government is also making a "continuous effort" to minimise data leaks, such as the ability to detect and prevent the input of sensitive information into LLMs.
"Singapore government has adopted a resilient mindset and remains ready to adapt to novel technological developments, such as the emergence of LLMs. We remain committed to identifying new threats posed by such developments," the agency added.
