Taiwan’s head of cybersecurity told CNN Business this month that it is using dramatic measures to guard against technological vulnerabilities — including employing roughly two dozen computer experts to deliberately attack the government’s systems and help it defend against what Taiwanese authorities estimate are some 20 million to 40 million cyberattacks every month.
Taiwan says it has been able to defend against the overwhelming majority of attacks. Successful breaches number in the hundreds, while only a handful are what the government classifies as “serious.”
But the enormous number — and where Taiwan thinks they’re coming from — has compelled the government to take the issue seriously, according to Chien Hung-wei, head of Taiwan’s Department of Cyber Security.
“Based on the attackers’ actions and methodology, we have a rather high degree of confidence that many attacks originated from our neighbor,” he told CNN Business, referring to mainland China.
“The operation of our government highly relies on the internet,” Chien said. “Our critical infrastructure, such as gas, water and electricity are highly digitized, so we can easily fall victim if our network security is not robust enough.”
