Here's how organisations in Asia Pacific are using artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud to better secure themselves, enhance operational efficiency and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Sunningdale Tech to reduce its cyber risk with BlackBerry’s help
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Sunningdale Tech — a Singapore-headquartered manufacturer of precision plastic components — is using BlackBerry’s AI-driven autonomous prevention and always-on cybersecurity solutions to protect its manufacturing environment better.
The manufacturing industry and its supply chains are built around a combination of legacy operational systems (OT) and connected IT environments, and the expanding attack surface is making the sector a lucrative and enticing target for threat actors. As such, in-house monitoring and signature-based antivirus software are no longer adequate today.
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Sunningdale Tech has therefore deployed BlackBerry’s CylanceGUARD to ensure continuous protection in online, offline and air-gapped environments. As a 24x7 managed detection and response service, CylanceGUARD provides Sunningdale Tech with access to trained threat prevention experts through a subscription-based model.
The solution also includes CylancePROTECT for endpoint protection and CylanceOPTICS for endpoint detection and response, which both use the seventh-generation Cylance AI engine from BlackBerry.
These prevention-first solutions provide enhanced visibility and always-on protection against current and future cyberthreats in OT environments — from ransomware to device-based attacks — with lightweight clients capable of operating entirely offline.
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Since Cylance AI can operate offline and requires minimal human intervention, it has reduced Sunningdale Tech’s daily security alerts from 20,000 to fewer than 10.
“In addition to minimising alert fatigue, BlackBerry lets us focus on what we do best while they focus on stopping attacks. BlackBerry’s expert analysts act as an extension of my team, correlating telemetry across devices and providing actionable intelligence to prevent threats across our mixed environments. This is future-proofing our organisation, as I believe IT and OT will eventually merge into a single ecosystem as manufacturers embrace Industry 4.0 and tear down the wall between the two,” says Anthony Pua, Sunningdale Tech’s chief information officer (Global IT).
Siam Makro Group turns to Oracle for better retail management
Photo: Bloomberg
Siam Makro Public Co — operator of Thailand’s wholesaler Makro and leading retailer Lotus’s — has deployed Oracle retailer technology to support its retail management.
The move aims to enable it to better manage its sales volume, inventory, orders, invoices, and customer data to ensure it has the right products in the right locations and meets its customers’ expectations.
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Before this deployment, Siam Makro implemented Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to drive efficiency and reliability in its Makro retail management. The company also uses Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) to gain the operational agility needed to support more than 2,600 Lotus’s stores in Thailand and Malaysia.
“Oracle provided the holistic technology we needed — from infrastructure and finance to proven retail technology — to support our Smart Retail plans. This implementation creates better customer experiences through a smarter operation and a more efficient inventory optimisation strategy,” says Paul Stephen Howe, group chief information technology officer at Siam Makro.
The partnership with Oracle will also help Lotus’s achieve its mission of becoming a “New Smart Retailer”. This calls for innovative technology to seamlessly connect offline stores with an online platform to offer the best customer experience and convenient shopping.
“By collaborating with Oracle, Lotus’s can leverage the proven combination of merchandising, store inventory, and ERP financials to support the company’s growth,” says Mike Webster, senior vice-president and general manager of Oracle Retail.
VPBank elevates the digital banking experience with AWS
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Vietnam’s VPBank will leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver delightful digital banking experiences.
It will use AWS SageMaker and AWS AI Services to improve its analytics capabilities and accelerate the development of banking and financial applications, enhance automation of banking tasks, and drive new digital banking features, such as chatbots, to improve customer service.
Additionally, the collaboration will help VPBank optimise costs without investing in on-premises infrastructure to scale its digital banking services.
AWS’s secure global infrastructure will also ensure VPBank’s banking and financial applications offer the highest safety for domestic and international transactions to address privacy and data security concerns.
VPBank will also leverage AWS training and certification programmes to develop a workforce proficient in cloud skills to continue building innovative digital banking products while delighting customers. In addition, AWS will work with VPBank to support its recruitment events targeted at engineers and developers.
With these initiatives, the bank can bolster the quantity and quality of its talent acquisition and training programmes with support and advice from AWS. This includes leveraging AWS Skills Guild to create a customised programme for the bank’s staff to build cloud fluency across the organisation.
“The collaboration between VPBank and AWS will create great innovations in the bank to satisfy the diverse needs of our customers. It will also help strengthen the stability of VPBank’s core banking system — meeting the highest standards of information security and safety — and help customers feel more secure whenever they conduct a transaction, especially in the digital environment. With the cloud, VPBank will master technologies that allow it to go even faster in building financial and banking solutions and promoting business growth through technology application,” says Luu Thi Thao, standing deputy CEO of VPBank.
