Many small and medium-sized enterprises here are vulnerable to breaches similar to the one committed on SingHealth's IT system, as they do not have defence software that can monitor sophisticated cyber attacks, Association of Small and Medium Enterprises president Kurt Wee warned yesterday.

Numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), especially those that do not have some active defence mechanism in place, have fallen prey to ransomware, a form of malicious software or malware that denies infected accounts access to their data until a ransom is paid.