Gov't urged to invest more in cyber security

Chinese Internet experts on Tuesday called for greater investment in the country's cyber security amid the growing array of ransomware attacks.

Qi Xiangdong, president of Qihoo 360, China's leading Internet security service provider, said at this year's China Internet Conference in Beijing that "the country's investment in cyber security accounts for less than 1 percent of the total investment in its information construction. Compared with the U.S. (15 percent) and Europe (10 percent), China still lags behind."

Qi added that more than half of the 100 companies and government departments they recently surveyed had not done any security checks on their systems within a year and such neglect led to a large-scale impact of ransomware attacks.

In May, tens of thousands of computers worldwide were crippled by the ransomware attack called "WannaCry." In China, some industries and government computers were impacted by the virus with education research agencies being the worst hit.

The Internet business in China contributed 6.9 percent of the country's economy in 2016, compared with 5.5 percent in 2010, said Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The number is higher than the U.S. where it was 5.4 percent, Wu added.

However, China's investment on cyber security talents accounted for around 10 percent of the total investment on the Internet, far behind the U.S. (more than 30 percent) and member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (more than 20 percent), said Wu.

Experts at the conference said that there is an urgent need for cultivating cyber security talents as the construction of a new Internet system now more relies on the cooperation of advanced protection systems and professional cyber security experts.

China has launched a national push to train more cyber security talents, with many top universities having started to offer cyberspace-related majors since 2015. As of 2014, China has more than 700,000 cyber security talents working in key information system and infrastructure industries. By 2020, China will need about 1.4 million cyber security talents, according to previous reports.

Meanwhile, China also launched a fund for cyber security with an initial capital of 300 million yuan ($44 million) to realize the nation's strategic goal of becoming a strong Internet power.