An administrative meeting to review the state of cybersecurity in government agencies and departments is to be held tomorrow, Minister Without Portfolio Simon Chang (張善政) said yesterday.
Chang said he had been instructed to arrange the meeting by Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) after Chen read a report about a warning given by US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in October that the possibility of the US being hit by a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” was increasing every day.
Chen said that if the US is so concerned about information and communications security, then Taiwan should place equal — if not more — emphasis on the matter, Chang said.
“We should remain aware of the possibility of such attacks and include the concept of cybersecurity in all aspects of government,” Chang said.
“It’s impossible for any government to be invulnerable to hacking attacks,” Chang said, adding that because of this, governments must always be on alert for such breaches of security.
Chang said that there were currently no Internet security measures in any governmental department or office and that he would ask all those in attendance at the meeting to start working on rectifying this lack of security.
The issues to be discussed at the meeting do not yet require the participation of the National Security Council, Chang said, but he added that he liaised regularly with the council’s security consultant to exchange ideas.
Chang said the meeting is also to discuss whether the Information and Communication Security Technology center and the Office of Homeland Security overlap and should be integrated.
He said that the in the US, jurisdiction over homeland security, and information and communications security lay with the US Department of Homeland Security, but that in Taiwan the responsibility was divided between two separate offices.
“I would have to look into exactly what the Office of Homeland Security’s mandate is before making a recommendation on whether the two offices should be integrated,” Chang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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