Cybersecurity a low priority for Asian GPs

Asian GPs do not plan to increase their spending on digital threats while market regulation and tax regulation are bigger concerns, according to a report by Augentius.

Fund managers in Asia give cybersecurity a low priority, according to a study by fund administrator Augentius.

The top three challenges for Asian managers in 2017 were market regulation (73 percent), and tax regulation as well as fundraising (both at 55 percent).

While a large majority of UK, European and US managers upped their cybersecurity spending in the last year, the trend is reversed in Asia, the report found. More than 50 percent of Asian GPs said they spent less on cybersecurity in 2017, compared with European GPs (36 percent) and US GPs (27 percent).

This trend will continue into 2018, as an even larger majority of the Asian GPs intend to spend less in 2018.

Cyber attacks were common in 2017, the report noted, with the private equity and real estate industries often seen as targets. Some examples of cyber attacks globally in the previous year are WannaCry, whose victims included the UK National Health Service, Spanish telecoms company Telefonica and French car manufacturer Renault, and NotPetya, which targeted information technology infrastructure in Ukraine.