Positive Technologies recently hosted the Positive Hack Talks that brought together cybersecurity professionals in Malaysia, along with international experts, to share real-world knowledge and experiences.
The event is joined by industry veterans, seasoned pros, and even students to get them up to speed on what’s actually happening in the real world, with one of the key points being that Malaysia leads the region in digital adoption, with internet penetration hitting 97%. But of course, everything has a downside, with this being the 6th spot in the highest cyberattacks recorded, which makes up about 10% of the region, on top of ads on dark web forums, placing “MY” in 4th in terms of data breaches backed by financial motivations.
Additional details come from the popular VPN Surfshark, which provided the number of 152 breached accounts per 100 people in Malaysia, with the regional average being 55. This places Malaysia 4th in SEA and 31st globally for compromised accounts.
At the same time, the government is already aware of a talent shortage in cybersecurity and has been pushing initiatives to develop more professionals and attract experts from abroad, which explains why events like this are becoming more important.
One of the key voices at the meetup, Dmitry Serebryannikov, framed it as part of a bigger push to build a global cybersecurity community. He talked about sharing expertise across countries to deal with increasingly complex threats, especially as Southeast Asia becomes a more important focus.
The sessions themselves went pretty deep too – covering things like AI-assisted vulnerability research, malware analysis, email system security, and new anti-phishing frameworks. You also had speakers like Alexander Popov showing off an open-source Linux kernel project, while Akshay Jain walked through reverse engineering techniques for Android RASP.
Positive Technologies started this series in 2024 with events in places like Bengaluru and Hanoi, and by 2025 they’ve already expanded to cities like Jakarta, São Paulo, and Cairo to show that it is a global effort rather than a local one.
