Singapore, January 22, 2026 — Artificial intelligence (AI) is fuelling Singapore’s digital economy, transforming how businesses grow and how public services are delivered. But the same technology is also reshaping cybercrime, making attacks faster, stealthier, and harder to detect. The democratisation of AI has lowered the barriers for cybercriminals. Today, anyone with malicious intent can tap into AI-driven tools to launch scams and attacks that once required highly specialised skills.
For Singapore, where digitalisation underpins everything from healthcare to financial services, this shift presents a stark challenge. AI is now a weapon on both sides: adversaries are using it to exploit, while defenders must use it to protect. The question is whether organisations can adapt quickly enough to keep pace.
AI reshaping the threat landscape
From deepfake impersonations to AI-cloned voices, attackers are weaponizing AI to make scams almost indistinguishable from reality. A recent IDC survey commissioned by Fortinet found that 56% of organisations in Singapore faced AI-powered threats over the past year. Majority of them are also some seeing them double or even triple in scale over the last one year.
Yet the level of preparedness lags. Only one out of five organisations express strong confidence in their ability to defend against AI-driven threats. Most admit that attackers are already moving faster than their detection tools can keep up, and a small but significant number admit they have no ability to monitor these threats at all. The result is a widening imbalance, with AI enabling attackers to innovate at a pace many defenders cannot match.
The human factor: lean and overstretched teams
Technology alone cannot explain the challenge. At the heart of the issue are capacity gaps; many organisations simply do not have enough skilled professionals to meet the rising demand. On average, fewer than one cybersecurity professional is available for every 100 employees. Leadership structures are also thin, with only one of six companies employing dedicated Chief Information Security Officers, and even fewer maintaining specialist teams for functions such as threat hunting, incident response, or cloud security.
The result is mounting pressure. Security staff are inundated with alerts, tool sprawl adds complexity, and burnout is a constant risk. In such conditions, even well-prepared organisations can struggle to sustain resilience against fast-evolving AI-driven attacks.
Turning AI into defence
This is why defenders must turn AI into an advantage of their own. Just as it has supercharged the attacks, it can also revolutionise the defence. By automating detection and response, AI-powered systems can cut through the noise, spot anomalies in real time, and help overworked teams act faster. When trained on large datasets, these models can learn to recognise the subtle markers of phishing, malware, or malicious code that humans might miss.
But speed is not enough. What is needed is simplicity and integration. Fragmented tools operating in silos only add to the problem. Organisations need a platform-based approach that unifies AI-driven defences across networks, endpoints, cloud workloads, and applications. This integration ensures visibility across the entire environment, accelerates response, and reduces the burden on lean security teams.
Collaboration as a force multiplier
The fight against AI-enabled cybercrime cannot be won by individual organisations alone. Just as attackers share resources and coordinate their operations, defenders must collaborate more closely. Public-private partnerships will play a central role.
This is why companies like Fortinet are working with Singapore’s government agencies and academia to strengthen resilience. We partner with the Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT) to share threat intelligence that enhances national cyber defences. We are also an Advocate Partner in the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore’s SG Cyber Safe Partnership Programme, supporting local organisations with training, education, and technology guidance.
Beyond the public sector, building the next generation of defenders is equally critical. Through Fortinet’s Network Security Expert (NSE) Certification programme, we collaborate with Nanyang Polytechnic, the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), and other institutions to provide students and mid-career professionals with hands-on training. This is part of our global pledge to train one million people in cybersecurity by 2026.
Looking ahead: resilience as the true test
As Singapore advances toward an AI-driven future, the stakes will only rise. Cybercriminals are already exploiting AI to scale their operations, bypass traditional defences, and attack with unprecedented precision. The challenge for defenders is not just to keep up but to get ahead, to anticipate, to outthink, and to outpace adversaries.
True resilience means more than surviving individual incidents. It is about sustaining trust, continuity, and growth in a digital economy where cyber risk is constant. For Singapore, this will require a collective effort: government setting the direction, businesses embedding resilience into their operations, academia nurturing the next generation of defenders, and industry partners contributing innovation and expertise.
AI will define the next chapter of cybersecurity. Whether Singapore leads that chapter will depend on how quickly organisations turn today’s risks into tomorrow’s resilience.
Attributed to: Jess Ng, Country Head, Singapore and Brunei, Fortinet
