 Your Excellency, President of Interpol, Excellency Secretary-General of Interpol, Distinguished Guests, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, a very good evening to all of you. And for friends from around the world, warm welcome to Singapore, literally. It's a pleasure to join all of you this evening. I'm delighted that this second edition of Interpol World held in Singapore continues to draw strong participation from law enforcement, government bodies, academia, security professionals and citizen providers. We have here with us today influential thought leaders and practitioners from both the public and private sectors converging to discuss safety and security issues. This comes at a time when the global community grapples with the rapidly changing and increasingly complex security landscape that presents unprecedented challenges. Interpol World reflects Interpol's efforts to build a safer world through an enhanced international cooperation and innovation on policing and security matters. Singapore strongly supports such efforts by Interpol to strengthen global safety and security. Our support for Interpol goes beyond Interpol World. Singapore hosts the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation or IGCI. Our increasingly global world connected by technology and powered by cross-border networks offers new economic and other opportunities but at the same time presents new security risks. We therefore support Interpol's global strategy to combat current and emergent security risks such as cyber crime, terrorism and transnational crime. We recognize the importance of capacity building and innovation to enable countries to fight transnational crime and security threats collectively and effectively. Indeed, technology and innovation are key enablers for law enforcement and security services too in this digital age. Policing of the future will increasingly rely on technology and data analytics to fight terrorism, cyber crime and organized and emergent crime. It is critical that both the public and private sectors collaborate closely to understand the current and emerging risks in the operating environment and examine how technology and innovation can be harnessed to the fullest potential to address and mitigate these risks. Just as law enforcement and security services are looking at different ways to integrate technology and innovation in their operating models, so too are terrorists and criminal organizations, particularly in the realm of cyberspace. Cyberspace offers the twin benefits of anonymity and mobility to terrorists and criminals alike. A criminal underground economy hidden in the internet has been operating for many years now. Terrorists and criminal networks can now operate globally, coordinating complex operations across territorial borders in real time. Although recent WannaCry ransomware outbreak is a stark reminder of this reality, the ransomware reportedly affected computer networks in more than 150 countries affecting more than 200,000 people. Just last week media reported a new, not pettier, ransomware outbreak. The outbreak wreaked havoc around the globe, crippling businesses in many sectors including banking, energy, and transport. It is therefore tiny that the dark net received the attention and focus of the Interpol World Congress earlier today. As a highly cyber-connected city, Singapore is enhancing its capabilities and resilience to deal with the cyber threat. So allow me this evening to take a bit of time to share some of our key initiatives against cyber crime in the spirit of Sharon. In July last year we launched our National Cyber Crime Action Plan, or NCEP for short. There are four key priorities in this action plan. First, educating and empowering the public to stay safe in the cyber space. Second, enhancing the government's capacity and capability to combat cyber crime. Third, strengthening legislation and the criminal justice framework. And fourth, stepping up partnerships and international negotiations. I will elaborate starting with the first priority, public education and empowerment. As part of its public cyber outreach and resilience program, the Singapore Police Force actively reaches up to members of the public to encourage safe online behaviour and to reduce opportunities for cyber criminals. These are customized to better target more vulnerable groups in society such as our young and our elderly. But the police has also partnered in Europe all in its no more ransom project. The project helps victims of ransomware retrieve their encrypted data without paying any ransom. It educates the public on how they can better protect themselves. Since December last year, more than 10,000 ransomware victims worldwide have benefited using tools available in the project's online portal to decrypt their affected devices. The police has been proactively promoting the project's online portal to our public and to expand the reach of the project in the currency, the process of translating the contents of the online portal into our other official languages. So that's education in our page. I now move on to the second pillar of our action plan, which is enhancing government's capacity and capability to combat cyber crime. Here we seek to enhance our cyber crime investigation as well as forensic capability. In 2015, the police established a cyber crime command within our criminal investigation department. Its role is to develop specialist expertise in cyber investigation, digital forensics and cyber crime policy, and also to improve police readiness for and response to emerging cyber threats. Full-time cyber crime response teams have been set up since December 2015 in all six of our frontline police divisions across the city to enhance our cyber crime response capabilities. Our third national priority is to strengthen laws and our criminal justice framework to tackle cyber threats. The Computer Misuse and Cyber Security Act is Singapore's primary legislation to deal with cyber crime. We amended it in June this year to address the increasing scale and transnational nature of cyber crime, as well as the evolving tactics of cyber criminals. So, for instance, it is now an offense under our law to deal with hacked personal information as well as hacking tools with criminal intent. The amendment has also given Singapore extra territorial jurisdiction over offenses where the Act causes or creates a significant risk of serious harm in Singapore. Move on to the final pillar of our action plan, which is building partnerships and international negotiations. Building strong partnerships with key public and private sector actors is this important thought he thrust. As Interpol's global hub for combating cyber crime, the IGCI is a natural partner for us. Collaborating with Interpol and other partner countries, Singapore has rolled out the Sioux of capacity building programs for the ASEAN region in the last few years, as we are the ASEAN niche of the cyber crime. Some contemporary examples include the ASEAN Cyber Capacity Development Project funded by Japan and implemented by Interpol that will run from 2016 to 2018. The Interpol Southeast Asian World Shop on Cyber Crime under the auspices of the Singapore-US third party training program in 2015 and 2016 and the ASEAN plus three cyber crime will shop in July and last year involving China, Japan and South Korea. We are privileged to have Interpol's presence in Singapore as well as strong support from key international partners in ASEAN member states. We hope to build an even more collaborative environment to exchange best practices and to forge even those operational needs. This has borne fruit, for example in February this year Interpol led an operation targeting cyber crime across ASEAN member states. The operation conducted out of IGCI brought together investigators from seven ASEAN member states to share information on specific cyber crime situations in their respective countries. It identified nearly 9,000 compromised servers and in hundreds of malware infected websites and investigations after ongoing. The private sector too is an important partner. Its investments in R&D, for example, provides a significant competitive advantage against cyber crime. Now, recognizing the value of private sector the Singapore Police Cyber Crime Command ruled out the alliance of public private cyber crime stakeholders initiative in February this year. This alliance serves as a dedicated platform for law enforcement and the private sector to meet to enhance cyber crime awareness in the private sector to prevent, deter and detect cyber crime and to forge active collaboration. There are currently 40 partners in the alliance comprising global IT companies, e-commerce platforms, telecommunications service providers, financial institutions as well as remittance agencies. Through this alliance, the stronger relations forged at the banks allow the police to quickly free bank accounts involved in the recent spades of impersonation scams. This prevented all of these fund transfers and loss for the victims. The Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs has also recently established a special interest group for cyber crime investigation in collaboration with the Singapore Cyber Security Consortium. Through this initiative, we can bring real world cyber crime and investigation challenges to the academia and our industry and leverage on their talent and innovation to deal with cyber crime. The fight against cyber crime cannot be fought by governments alone. The collaborative ecosystem involving the community, industry, academia and governments is crucial to tackling this formidable threat. I hope that all of us will leverage on Interpol World 2017 to forge deeper public private sector understanding and collaboration and contribute towards Interpol's vision to build a safer world. Once again, welcome to Singapore and I wish all of you an enjoyable networking evening and a productive and successful conference. Thank you.