Jeremy Hunt - UK Foreign Secretary (centre); James Hennah - managing director of BT in South East Asia (centre left) and Faisal Parvez - global services director of Domain Technology of BT (left)
BT has officially opened a new Singapore office during a three day visit to Asia from Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s Foreign Secretary.
The new office will act as the organisation’s regional cyber security hub and include a new customer experience centre, providing an interactive experience showcasing global connectivity services, cloud migration as well as cyber security services.
“It is an honour to welcome the Foreign Secretary to open our regional headquarters in Singapore,” said James Hennah, managing director at BT in South East Asia. “The new office is home to almost 300 highly skilled staff, supporting our growing list of customers in the region with resilient connectivity, cloud services and world class security.
“It builds on our established presence with both networking and cyber operations in the wider Asia Pacific region.
"Just over a year ago we opened a brand new Cyber Security R&D Centre in Sydney, tapping into local talent to help us alleviate the global cyber skills shortage."
BT’s regional clients include a number of Singapore government agencies, major banks and financial service providers, the Singapore Stock Exchange and local and global logistics and shipping operators.
“Cyber security is essential to our national security in the 21st Century and British businesses are making a vital contribution against this global threat,” said Hunt.
“The new BT office in Singapore will enable them to further strengthen their position as a leading player by providing expertise on cyber security solutions to countries and businesses across South East Asia.”
The visit comes after the UK and Singapore signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) on Cybersecurity Capacity Building at the Commonwealth Summit in 2018 where the two countries agreed to cooperate to deliver cyber security capacity building programmes to Commonwealth Member States for a two-year period.
The UK also committed to participate in Singapore’s ASEAN Cyber Capacity Programme (ACCP), originally launched in 2016.
A British cyber security expert will shortly start working in the British High Commission in Singapore to support this initiative, which will involve training and sharing best practice with officials working on cyber security in other ASEAN countries.
