Taiwan is committed to being a trusted link in the global chain of information security and technology industries, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday.
Tsai made the remark at an event that launched this year’s Hacks in Taiwan Conference, adding that the US, Japan, South Korea and others are also taking part to bolster collective cybersecurity for the alliance of democracies.
Taiwan has been on the front line in the defense of democracy, and the country has many years of experience in dealing with cyberattacks, which gave rise to the government’s approach to information security being equal to national security, she said.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
The National Security Council has been asked to update its information security strategy by the end of December, Tsai said.
The new strategy would involve public-private cooperation, developing an information security industry, cultivating expertise, establishing a department of digital development under the central government and implementing information security in the six core strategic industries, she said.
Those industries are information technology, cybersecurity, precision health, renewable energy, national defense and strategic stockpiling, the Executive Yuan said.
The government is to implement the policy in stages by requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose their exposure if they have been hacked, and for part of their revenue to be spent on information security, Tsai said.
The government is mulling further measures that would require publicly traded companies above a certain size to create an internal cybersecurity unit, she said.
“Taiwan’s goal is to forge a trusted link in the global information security system and industry chain,” she said. “This effort will protect the country’s information and communications security, and be part of the clean supply chains that the world demands,” Tsai said.
The planned Cyber Security Center of Excellence would train a generation of information security experts to help execute the government’s vision, she said.
The administration is confident that Taiwan can lead Asia as a provider of information security technology and expertise that would help like-minded nations to shore up their cyberspace defenses, she said.
Tsai said that the hacker community has been indispensable in providing impetus to the administration’s information security policy.
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