ScamReady Summit ASEAN - reflections
The GSE team recently returned from an intensive series of high-level engagements in Malaysia, bridging the public-facing momentum of the Google ScamReady Summit (28 April) with the strategic, closed-door deliberations of ASEAN member states (29-30 April). The energy in Kuala Lumpur was palpable, underscored by a shared recognition that the fight against scams has reached a critical inflection point.
During the Google event, the Managing Director for APAC highlighted Google’s collaboration with the the Global Signal Exchange: “GSE helps Google react fast” in its response to fraud.
The private sessions with ASEAN member states narrowed in on three urgent priorities: cross-sector information sharing, aggressive awareness campaigns, and the hardening of supply chain vulnerabilities.
For GSE, these priorities speak directly to our mission. To outpace agile criminal networks, threat signals cannot remain siloed.
While the physical presence of scam centres in the region is well-documented, their digital footprint remains curiously scant in global datasets. In a presentation drawn from the GSE’s 1bn+ threat signals, using a combination of the GSE League Tables and Compass tools, Emily Taylor contrasted the physical and digital scam footprint across the region.
The evidence suggests that threat actors ruthlessly exploit mature tech hubs like Singapore to hide behind global cloud providers, while routing operations through emerging markets like Thailand and Laos to evade local detection. The data paints a fascinating, if complex, picture of the ASEAN digital footprint.
The GSE data indicates a diverse picture across the ASEAN nations: while countries like Brunei and Cambodia have almost no large-scale ASNs featured in our abuse data, others are battling highly specific local threats. For instance, the Philippines faces a targeted malware threat hosted directly on local mobile networks, while Vietnam and Indonesia navigate a volatile mix of both phishing and malware. Only one regional registrar currently sits in the global bottom ten for abuse, and three large-scale ASNs have abuse reports exceeding 9% of their stock.
The diversity across the region, the cross-border nature of the digital infrastructure highlight the need for international collaboration, both among the ASEAN member states and further afield, to ensure that weaknesses in the supply chain can be designed out, and harms to consumers be prevented.
