Group-IB, an international company that specializes in preventing cyberattacks, has officially opened the doors of its Global Headquarters located in the Fragrance Empire Building in Singapore. Bringing with it, the company will leverage its cutting edge cybersecurity technologies to help Singapore businesses fight against cybercrime. The company also is in the processes of grooming local talent to join in the fight, by working closely with Singaporean universities to ensure cyber stability and security of the region’s companies and government organisations.
Group-IB, which has been successfully investigating cybercrime and preventing cyberattacks around the world for the past 16 years, has officially opened its doors in Singapore. The company’s Global HQ located in the Fragrance Empire Building has become a new home for a team of employees from each of the company’s key business units which have relocated from Group-IB’s Eastern European Headquarters in Moscow. The team includes leading experts from Digital Forensics Lab, Global Investigations, Digital Risk Protection and Threat Intelligence departments.
These key employees are top talent from Group-IB who will be tasked with finding and grooming local talent to join their teams. In addition to that, they have been tasked with creating a digital forensic laboratory, a cyber investigations department, Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GIB), and an R&D department. Effectively recreating the same unique organisation of Group-IB’s Eastern European HQ in Singapore in line with the company’s strategy to have a chain of offices in the global financial centers.
Singapore is at the heart of the APAC region, which is a priority destination for the company’s business development: 29% of Group-IB’s international revenue comes from the APAC region and Singapore in particular. We are expecting this number to grow exponentially as we continue to invest in local talent and build close ties with the Singaporean business community. Singapore was also chosen due to its favourable location and conditions for business development. The Singaporean government aims to create a safe and secure ecosystem for everyone — the people and public and private companies. Most importantly, unlike any other country in the world, Singapore understands the importance of staying up to date with the latest cybersecurity technologies and trends, which is exactly what we are bringing to Singapore.
CEO Group-IB
The company has already started actively hiring local talents: Shafique Dawood, who becomes the company’s APAC business development director and has more than 15 years of successful experience in top cybersecurity companies within the region, and Shawn Tay, a hungry cyber threat intelligence analyst with comprehensive knowledge about local threats and adversaries. The company will continue to grow its new headquarters by training and hiring local top achievers in the field of cybersecurity to join each of the company’s departments by the end of 2019. The initial focus will be on cyber threat intelligence specialists, digital forensics experts, anti-fraud analysts, and reverse engineers.
Highly skilled employees that meet Group-IB’s high standards are not easy to find, be it Europe, Americas or Asia. That is why the crucial element of our strategy is to work hand in hand with leading universities in Singapore to develop highly skilled cybersecurity experts through joint educational programs and training courses with leading Singaporean schools. The company is already taking proactive steps in this direction: Group-IB has recently signed an MoU with the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) and is working on a cybersecurity program at the SIM.
Director of International Business Development
Moreover, the company has a network of partner organisations in the region, among which are private companies in Vietnam and Thailand, which already offer Group-IB’s products and solutions on their markets, as well as universities, and international organisations, such as INTERPOL Digital Crime Centre located in Singapore, with which Group-IB has been cooperating since 2017. Such partnerships are of great value when it comes to collecting data on hacking groups that operate in the region to fight against cybercrime and ensure a strong and sustainable digital economy.
