The strategy notes growing e-commerce between Asean countries and Australia.
Singapore and Australia signed a digital economy agreement in 2020 to set digital trade rules, which include ensuring the interoperability of e-invoicing systems and the sufficient protection of personal data.
Australia sees value in cooperating with Asean countries to improve their cyber security and resilience against sophisticated digital threats that exploit e-commerce. This, in turn, could help protect the Australian economy from cybercrimes and cyberattacks.
Indeed, greater interest and investment in the digital economy come with the need to strengthen bilateral and regional cooperation in digital security.
As two of Australia’s largest trading partners in Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Singapore could work together with Australia to demonstrate to the region how dialogue may lead to practical digital security cooperation.
This could have knock-on benefits for other Asean countries (and Timor-Leste) in the earlier stages of digitalisation.