Last week’s grenade attack on a nightclub in Selangor is the first successful Islamic State (IS) attack in the country, Malaysia police have confirmed. Prof Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the RSIS International Centre for Terrorism Research and Political Violence, said the attack demonstrated that despite continuing counter-terrorism operations, IS’ ideology had spread and established a regional presence in South-east Asia. Prof Gunaratna, who first noted that the nightclub attack was the work of IS in a commentary published on the RSIS website last Wednesday, said the nature of terrorism has changed from group attacks to networked attacks, making it a challenge even for the best security and intelligence services to prevent all such occurrences.