APNIC 60 in Da Nang, Viet Nam opened with two keynotes: Leslie Daigle from the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) and Vu The Binh from the Viet Nam Internet Association (VIA). Both bring decades of experience in technology and governance across industry and representative bodies.
Leslie Daigle, GCA: Strengthening Internet Integrity: Collaborative Solutions for Cybersecurity Challenges
Leslie has been with GCA for more than five years, serving as CTO and leading the Internet Integrity Program. She previously worked with the Internet Society (ISOC), ran her own consultancy, Thinking Cat Enterprises, and held roles at Cisco and Verisign. She also chaired the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and has been active in the IETF since 1995.
We’ve heard from Leslie twice on APNIC’s PING podcast, most recently in June of this year (and also three times since 2017 on the blog), discussing the GCA investment in honeypots, and their approaches to exploring the worldwide problem of ‘bad traffic’. A focal point of her consideration of the problem is that technologists aren’t able to fix this by themselves — the nature of the problem has clearly gone beyond filtering and monitoring. It poses immense risks to societal stability, and to service delivery in government, health, education and commerce.
As Leslie said during her presentation, the jurisdictional boundaries are not respected by the bad actors, and security problems are inherently an international problem, “everything, everywhere, all at once” — from well before that became a worldwide movie success.
Sometimes, asking the hard question and NOT floating technology as the fix is the right thing to do, and Leslie is confident (and I judge correct) that it’s time to widen the discussion. I’m delighted Leslie accepted the keynote request, and glad she has this opportunity to pose these hard questions. Perhaps her keynote can kick-start some thinking among the wider governance community in the Asia Pacific and beyond, about coordinated approaches to securing our respective national and international interests in a safe, secure and reliable public Internet.
GCA has projects in all three of the critical ‘arms’ of Internet infrastructure — names, numbers (addresses) and routing. A system that will be familiar to many of us is MANRS, which GCA now curates on behalf of the wider community, from its origins in the Internet Society. They also run a honeypot farm, very similar to the one APNIC’s security specialist Adli Wahid operates, and have a great visualization of worldwide traffic trends in the presentation. GCA’s honeypot data can show how different attack profiles exist, such as:
- The ‘APT36’ pattern targets political and military assets.
- The ‘Kimsuky’ attack targets science, industry and education as a ‘soft underbelly’ into government and strategic assets.
- The ‘Redtail’ profile, which is distinct from both of the above in that it is financially motivated.
All of these kinds of attacks can be seen as directed at the Asia Pacific economies.
During her keynote, Leslie pointed out that “improvement comes through collaboration”, and this is a space where we’re going to need a lot more public collaborative discussion about what to do. Unfortunately, as a result of attacks having visible links to Asia Pacific hacking communities, we’re sometimes getting the ‘non-collaborative’ approach of simply blocking IP address ranges “from the wrong economies”, which immediately disadvantages everyone. “A good way to improve cybersecurity is NOT to just block everything”, she said.
Vu The Binh: Modernizing the Internet of Vietnam with Cloud Computing, Data Centers, CDNs and IPv6-only
Vu The Binh is also no stranger to the Internet, with a career stretching back to 1996, and active roles as Director General and on the board of directors of NetNam, one of the first ISPs in Viet Nam and a national enterprise. With a strong interest in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and leadership roles bridging software and systems development with government, Vu is ideally placed to discuss the continued progress of Viet Nam capital investment in data centres, services, and the continued march of IPv6 into everyday commerce.
What stands out is the pace of IPv6 adoption alongside the growth in general access to the Internet. With a population of just over 100 million, 80 million users is close to saturation. Modernization matters because of the rising expectations of high-speed service to cloud and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and the ‘foundational’ quality of the Internet for future technology-led activity nationwide. The goal is to place Viet Nam as an ASEAN digital hub!
As discussed at APRICOT 2025 in Petaling Jaya earlier this year, the data centre market worldwide is now facing pressures of access to land, cooling infrastructure (water included), and power. Viet Nam is well placed in the region to provide all three, compared to economies like Singapore, which are approaching maximum density against other demands on their infrastructure, land and utilities. Viet Nam’s investment here is still smaller than these markets, but significant growth potential exists.
Vu’s talk showcases how ISPs and data centre companies in Viet Nam are seizing market share, noting that the same difficulties of land and power will come in turn. Significant revenue is now seen in around 15 data centre providers, split over Viettel (with almost 50% of the market), VNPT (20%), FPT (17%) and CMC (10%) in the main, consuming around 45MW of power. This revenue base could increase tenfold in the next 8 to 10 years.
Planning is underway for hyperscale data centre campus deployments in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Hanoi, and Da Nang from all the major providers and others, which will enable ML/AI application deployments as well as growth in the general data centre/CDN/cloud marketplace.
Across the national network, around 60 million users are already on IPv6. Both overall Internet use and IPv6 deployment are approaching saturation, as Viet Nam enters a late stage of Internet and IPv6 growth.
Viet Nam is a mature Internet economy, with significant Over-The-Top (OTT) network streaming of television, audio, and general content. Average usage is now at six hours, with two hours of social media engagement across international platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.
Viet Nam had a spectacular start to its coordinated national IPv6 deployment, showing strong cooperation between state enterprises and a competitive telecommunications industry. Together, they rolled out high-speed broadband nationwide, introduced IPv6-capable Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), and launched dual-stack IPv6 services. We’ve covered this on the APNIC Blog, highlighting milestones such as:
- FPT’s launch of IPv6 in 2011 and its rapid growth.
- VNPT’s subsequent launch in 2016.
- The celebration of 1/3 of Viet Nam Internet users having access to IPv6 by 2019.
Statistics from APNIC Labs show Viet Nam has a consistent 60% IPv6 capability, with the top six market leaders (by random sample count) showing significant deployment. This is far in advance of the world average of 35% and is a signal of the commitment made by the Vietnamese technical community and its leadership. Internal measurements suggest up to 82% of mobile users are now IPv6 enabled.
In his Keynote, Vu also showcased the long road to engagement with national laws. A simple ministerial direction might be a one or two-year process; a key drive in the national strategic planning laws demands a decade of commitment by industry, government, and public interest bodies like the VIA. The government’s ambition is towards an IPv6-only Viet Nam Internet by 2030, and the industry and VNNIC together are in constant dialogue with the Ministry on the national goals.
Challenges remain. Cost is an important factor, and sovereignty over data and services is a continuing concern. Public cloud adoption also carries risks, as shown by the impact of recent changes in VMware’s licensing. Cybersecurity threats have led to adjustments in national security coordination, while the transition to IPv6-only presents issues for legacy systems that will need to be managed.
Despite the strong cooperation in IPv6 deployment, Vu noted that overall research and development investment in the network sector is still below what is needed, and that structural barriers and industry pressures can limit collaboration. However, the Viet Nam Internet industry recognizes these risks and continues to work to address them.
Expanding cloud, data centre, and CDN capacity is a key goal to strengthen national resilience, supported by better interconnection and international transit to reduce latency. Ongoing investment in regional and international cybersecurity, along with greater cooperation, will also be important.
With 80 million people already online, about 20 million still need to be connected — a classic 80/20 challenge. Extending high-speed Internet to rural and remote areas will remain a priority, with services like Starlink expected from 2026 to provide low-latency, high-speed connections via Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.
Download Leslie and Vu’s slides and watch the APNIC 60 Opening Ceremony with keynotes, below:
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