This year’s high profile cyberattacks – WannaCry, Petya, notPetya – continue a clear trend. In 2016, the US Democratic National Committee infamously had tens of thousands of emails stolen. The same year, the US Office of Personnel Management was breached for a second time, with attackers targeting personal information of military and intelligence personnel applying for security clearance. In 2015 the Philippines’ Commission on Elections’ entire database was hacked.

Attacks threaten all organisations adopting new data integration technologies. Humanitarian organisations face particular challenges. As the region considered most at risk from natural disasters globally, there is strong motivation in the Asia-Pacific to integrate humanitarian data systems to drastically reduce human fatalities. Over the past decade, disaster-induced deaths tripled in the region, according to the United Nations. These systems promise better information management leading to greater reduction of suffering and saving of life.

… Martin Searle is Associate Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.