Read More: Why Taiwan’s 2024 Election Matters From China to US: QuickTakeĭuring the October exercises administered by SimSpace, which Bloomberg observed, banks of computer screens flickered and alarms sounded, while an oversized display at the front of the room highlighted icons of bombs and missiles representing cyberattacks and threats. The industry has spent heavily on some of the most sophisticated cybersecurity and physical security measures to guard its intellectual property and factories.īut that hasn’t translated to other sectors of Taiwan’s economy, analysts said. The irony of Taiwan’s vulnerabilities is that the island is home to the world’s most advanced chipmaking technology, thanks to a home-grown supply chain network that helped the semiconductor industry flourish. “The reality is, they’re getting hammered,” said Lee Rossey, co-founder and chief technology officer at SimSpace. The latest exercises concluded that Taiwan’s banks still aren’t adequately prepared to meet the threat, according to participants and internal reports. Most cyber experts and officials acknowledge that Taiwan still has a lot to improve on when it comes to defending against sophisticated attacks. Officials at China’s Taiwan Affairs Office didn’t respond to a request for comment. Read More: Can China Fight? Putin’s War Underscores Xi’s Military Weakness “The majority of cases we’re dealing with are espionage attacks, they’re stealing data, and they’re attempting to maintain a persistent presence inside these networks for as long as they possibly can,” said Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence at Trend Micro Inc. That period, which coincided with unprecedented Chinese military drills around Taiwan, highlighted the island’s vulnerabilities. Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs reported the most common attack is focused on stealing sensitive information and that the frequency and number of threats surge depending upon geopolitical events.įor instance, during former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August 2022, Taiwan “experienced foreign cyberattacks reaching levels 23 times higher than previous peaks” and some government websites temporarily went offline due to the large volume of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to the ministry. Read More: Google Warns China Is Ramping Up Cyberattacks Against Taiwan Moreover, researchers at cybersecurity firm Fortinet said that Taiwan accounts for about 55% of the billions of malicious cyber threats detected in the Asia-Pacific region this year. The number of state-sponsored attacks has been soaring, more than doubling in three years, according to TeamT5, which has clients from Singapore to the US. And despite cybersecurity investments by bigger companies and government agencies, they have still struggled to keep up with the constantly shifting techniques employed by state-sponsored hackers. Li said that’s because small and medium-sized firms often lack the resources to effectively defend their systems. He said his firm’s work tracking state-sponsored hackers in Taiwan showed that most of the island’s government agencies and companies attacked last year “did not even notice that they were being hacked.” “Taiwan has near zero capability to defend itself from these advanced cyberattacks,” said Charles Li, chief analyst at Taiwanese cybersecurity firm TeamT5. A victory by the ruling party could prompt Beijing - which views Taiwan as its territory - to take a more aggressive approach toward Taipei. But the urgency to beef up digital defenses in Taiwan is acute, as the island sits at the center of US-China tensions and has a critical presidential election in January. Tabletop cyber exercises are hardly new, even in Taiwan.
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