SMU Professor Robert Deng delivered the keynote address at the inaugural SMU Cybersecurity Forum last week, which discussed the topic “The State of Cyber Threats and How To Fight Back”. The event also celebrated the conferment of the AXA Chair Professorship of Cybersecurity on Prof Deng which saw AXA Research Fund, the scientific philanthropy initiative of the French global insurer award him EUR800,000 (US$857,900) over a period of eight years to support his research in the development of new ways of protecting data security and privacy.

Prof Deng noted that the cybersecurity world is currently fighting an asymmetric battle against hackers, to the latter's advantage. There are three key reasons: the many loopholes and vulnerabilities which increase as our systems get more complex, the legacy systems still in operation which were designed a long time ago when security was not a concern, and the insufficient number of information security professionals that we have today. These collectively contribute to numerous loopholes and vulnerabilities in our systems, he said.