Arrests of hackers in China have soared by 80pc compared with last year after reports have emerged that the government there has made a total of 460 arrests of computer hackers this year so far.
“China’s Ministry of Public Security has described the hacker situation in the country as very grim and, while it observes that a number of computers in companies have little or no effective security measures, it really does illustrate the scale of the problem,” said Claire Sellick, event director for Infosecurity Europe.
“China is rapidly entering the ascendant in the IT stakes, with the country now boasting the largest number of mobile phones of any country in the world.
“It’s also clear that the country’s internet infrastructure is also growing rapidly, along with the number of internet users,” she added.
Hactivists
The director of the Infosecurity Europe event, which takes place in April, went on to say that the media has been full of oblique references to Western computer systems being attacked by hacktivists who are sympathetic to the Chinese cause.
Some outlets have even reported that the government was behind the attacks on Google late last year, a topic that cropped up in the current raft of documents being released in the WikiLeaks saga.
The crucial thing to remember, says Sellick, is that the rise of the internet means that the world has become a global village, meaning it is just as easy for hackers in a Chinese city to attack a company IT resource in the UK, as it is for a hacker elsewhere in the UK.
The internet, she explained, has changed many aspects of the IT and business world, and while most of those changes have been for the better, some are not.
It’s against this backdrop that it has become imperative for organisations to deploy the best security technology to defend their digital data assets.
“But keeping up to speed with these trends, as well as abreast of the latest security defence technologies and strategies, has almost become a full-time job,” Sellick said.
