Singapore Budget 2026: Cybersecurity will be core to AI resilience

Regional cybersecurity leaders share their views with CRN Asia on why it's imperative for organizations to ensure they are well prepared to deal with evolving cyberattacks.

With the increased focus on AI at the Singapore Budget 2026, several cybersecurity vendors feel that there needs to a well-defined approach to how organizations manage their data and security.

While AI does enable productivity and efficiency, it's paramount that organizations are resilient in how they develop and deploy their use cases. Apart from that, Lawrence Wong, Prime Minister of Singapore also stated that Singapore remains an attractive target for cybercriminals with attacks from malicious cyber actors, including hostile information campaigns and deliberate attempts to undermine the country’s national security.

“It is also no longer sufficient to defend government systems alone. Many private sector companies play a critical role in delivering essential services, and their systems are likewise vulnerable. The attackers often exploit smaller or less-protected companies as weak links to gain access to larger systems, and cause widespread disruption. Yet many companies lack the resources or the expertise to deal with these advanced cyber threats,” the Prime Minister said.

Regional cybersecurity leaders share their views with CRN Asia on why it's imperative for organizations to ensure they are well prepared to deal with evolving cyberattacks.

Claribel Chai, Country Director, Singapore and CLMB, Palo Alto Networks

As outlined by PM Lawrence Wong’s Budget 2026 speech, Singapore’s critical infrastructure has been a key target of cyber-attacks. The recent UNC3886 campaign reflects that. We believe that the Government’s investments in critical infrastructure is a key step in enhancing the sector’s resilience.

Strengthened regulatory oversight and protections for Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) continue to be vital, but resilience demands more than reactive defense. By embedding cybersecurity by design and modernizing legacy IT services, we can transform cybersecurity into a strategic enabler, ensuring our national infrastructure remains both secure and adaptable against the rising tide of AI-driven threats.

Steve Hunter, Director of Engineering, APAC, Arctic Wolf Networks

Singapore has remained a global leader in cyber defense over the last five years thanks to a nationally coordinated approach to cybersecurity; this year's budget reinstates this. By strengthening national security, safeguarding critical infrastructure, and enhancing cross-sector coordination, Singapore is taking decisive steps to defend against an increasingly sophisticated cyber threat landscape.

The government’s new AI Missions across manufacturing, connectivity, finance, and healthcare will accelerate innovation among Singaporean businesses but also expand the nation’s attack surface, particularly among SMEs, who are often the route to larger disruptions. As AI evolves as both a business enabler and an adversarial tool, early threat detection and operational readiness will be critical. True resilience will require disciplined investment in cybersecurity fundamentals, from identity and segmentation to secure remote access, logging, and continuous monitoring of trusted platforms.

Rob Newell, SVP and GM, APJ, New Relic

The Budget’s national AI push underscores the Singapore Government’s continued commitment to accelerating trusted AI adoption. For Singapore organizations, scaling AI comes at a pivotal moment. As economic uncertainty intensifies and cost discipline becomes paramount, many businesses are confronting the reality that AI tools are expensive to operate and that the costs of building and scaling AI-enabled capabilities can be difficult to predict. Success will depend on adopting AI in a way that delivers clear commercial value while maintaining tight control over operational expenditure.

Businesses need to be strategic about how they achieve results while managing costs. One of the most effective ways to control AI spending is to focus on the areas where it delivers the most value, using large language models (LLM) efficiently rather than broadly. By prioritizing high-impact use cases and refining their approach over time, companies can get the benefits of AI without overspending.

By simplifying how AI features are designed and used, organizations can reduce costs while also improving speed and reliability. Rather than defaulting to the newest or most advanced models, businesses should choose solutions that are fit for purpose. In many cases, proven and more affordable options can deliver the same customer value at a much lower cost when applied thoughtfully.

A disciplined approach to production is equally important. While cutting-edge models may be essential during prototyping to validate feasibility and customer impact, they are rarely cost-effective at scale. Once the value of an AI initiative is clear, organizations should shift their focus to reducing costs by simplifying how the technology is used and selecting more cost-effective solutions that still deliver strong results.

By continually testing, refining and scaling what works, companies can strike the right balance between innovation and affordability, ensuring their AI investments deliver lasting value without placing unnecessary pressure on budgets. An intelligent observability practice offers IT teams end-to-end visibility into their AI-integrated workflows, providing real-time insight to troubleshoot, compare, and optimize approaches. This allows companies to make adjustments when necessary to manage costs, improve performance, and reduce common issues that can cause costly hiccups.

Shilu Pushpan, Country Manager, Singapore, BlueVoyant

The 2026 Budget reinforces the importance of building long-term resilience to supply chain disruption, and third-party risk sits at the center of that challenge. As supply chains digitise and interconnect, managing the broad spectrum of third-party risks across legal, financial, geopolitical and cyber domains has become a defining capability. As one of Asia’s leading technology and innovation hubs, Singapore has set a high bar. BlueVoyant researchshows that 60 percent of Singapore organizations now report established or optimized third-party risk management (TPRM) programs, higher than the U.S.

Yet maturity does not equate immunity. Despite strong TPRM capabilities, 93 percent of Singapore organizations experienced negative impacts from a supply chain-related cyber incident, up sharply from 70 percent in 2024. This rise reflects not only an increase in attack volume, but also greater visibility into risk as monitoring improves. It underscores a critical reality, when even advanced organizations remain exposed in a highly interconnected ecosystem.

As supply chains grow more complex, periodic assessments and traditional monitoring are no longer sufficient to contain the risks. Organizations require continuous visibility into vendor risk, underpinned by senior leadership engagement that drives accountability and action. The Singapore Government’s support for AI adoption, including the Productivity Solutions Grant, will also serve as a key enabler. Nearly two-thirds of organizations identify AI as best suited to monitoring supplier risk at scale, given the volume and velocity of signals generated across third-party environments.

To realize this potential, Singapore organizations must adopt a more resilient model of cyber defense, one that prioritizes shared responsibility and continuous visibility. By moving from passive monitoring to active, collaborative remediation of security issues with suppliers, organizations can better identify and help fix risks, and contain impact when incidents occur.

James Greenwood, AVP, Solution Engineering at Tanium

Singapore’s continued investment in mitigating AI risks is important. However, as the nation modernizes its digital infrastructure to support emerging technologies, including domains like quantum and space — the exposure of endpoints, which remain a primary entry point for cyberattacks, will continue to expand beyond traditional laptops and servers. Today, ‘endpoints’ increasingly include cloud-based systems and the connected devices we rely on. From medical devices in hospitals to sensors and machines on factory floors and building management systems, these are becoming more exposed and harder to manage at scale.

The goal shouldn’t be to simply buy more security tools. It should be to use budgets more effectively by strengthening endpoint management: maintaining a trusted, up-to-date view of assets across environments, keeping systems securely configured, identifying vulnerabilities early, and patching quickly and at scale.

For Singapore’s critical infrastructure, the real-world impact is clear. Less downtime, more reliable digital citizen services, and greater continuity across connected infrastructure such as transport, power and energy, water, and defense capabilities. It’s a practical path to improved resilience, while getting better value from existing security investments.

Lee Anstiss, Regional Director, Southeast Asia and Korea, Infoblox

Budget 2026 has reinforced Singapore’s push for an AI-ready workforce with the launch of national AI Missions across key sectors, the formation of a new National AI Council to drive coordinated action, and expanded enterprise support through the Champions of AI program and enhanced tax incentives for AI adoption. These commitments are an important step toward building a resilient digital economy. But as the country accelerates its adoption of AI, it must also strengthen the foundations on which that future rests. This is especially true for the cybersecurity sector, which continues to face a significant talent gap.

Embracing AI can help cybersecurity teams do more with less by streamlining their operations and freeing analysts from the noise of modern cyber operations. It aligns with Singapore’s broader ambition to overcome structural constraints such as a tight labor market and ageing workforce. However, business leaders should not make the mistake of trusting AI-driven systems blindly. AI can analyze vast datasets in seconds and flag discrepancies, but it struggles to identify intent. To make the most of the grants and transformation initiatives announced in Budget 2026, enterprises should ensure they let AI carry manual workloads without replacing humans at the helm.

While Budget 2026 provides the roadmap for talent development, our upskilling efforts must not overlook the importance of fundamentals like the Domain Name System (DNS). This often forgotten part of the internet is involved in every type of cyberattack, no matter how sophisticated. It’s one example of a system that can’t be interpreted by AI alone. Organizations can only future-proof their cybersecurity by treating AI as a collaborator instead of a replacement, as they scale their AI ambitions.