Director-General of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) Lee Shying-jow says that Taiwan may set up a cyber-security agency. Lee was speaking before the legislature’s defense committee on Thursday.
Lee said that the NSB’s website was attacked 7.22 million times in 2013 alone. He said that the NSB later determined that 230,000 of these cyber-attacks were malicious in nature. Lee told the defense committee that the NSB successfully deflected all of these attacks. However, he said that he believes the NSB is only able to deflect 95% of attacks. He said that NSB is discussing ways to bring this success rate up to 100%.
Lee briefed the committee on the Chinese cyber army, the likely source of many cyber-attacks on Taiwanese government agencies such as the NSB. Lee cited a report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission which put the number of Chinese cyber-warfare specialists at 180,000.
Asked about the possibility of Taiwan countering cyber-attacks with a cyber-army of its own, Lee acknowledged that there is a plan to establish an agency that will concentrate Taiwan’s cyber-security experts in one place. He said that such an agency will likely be placed under the authority of an intelligence unit.