Insights from AIT Director's Year-End Address on Cybersecurity

On Monday, December 4, 2023, Director of American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Sandra Oudkirk was hosted by 台湾大学 to deliver her end-of-year remarks on cybersecurity and online information manipulation. These are challenges commonly faced by both Taiwan and the United States, especially as the 2024 Presidential Election is approaching.

Director Oudkirk commenced her speech by praising Taiwan’s unified commitment to sustaining “a free, open, and democratic society,” and stating “Taiwan is indeed, as we so often say, ‘a model of democracy.’” As a fellow democratic country whose values and interests align strongly and complementarily with Taiwan, the U.S. enjoys its longstanding mutually beneficial cooperation with Taiwan over a wide range of areas. This includes the issue of cyber resilience, which is essential to counter cyberattacks, a recent urgency.

Malicious cyber intrusions directed at Taiwan aim to target its democratic civil society. As a key node in the global ICT supply chain and undersea telecommunications cable networks, Taiwan has become a prime target for attacks from hostile cyber threat actors. In August this year, cybersecurity company Fortinet reported that Taiwan accounted for 55% of the 412 billion cyberattack events detected in the Asia-Pacific region–that is more than 22 billion threats–only in the first 6 months of 2023. While the total malware attacks dropped by almost 10% globally, it surged by 93.4% in Taiwan. Meanwhile, Google announced recently that there are more than 100 groups in China alone trying to get into computers of Taiwan’s defense sector and government agencies.

Taiwan’s government is aware that in this highly digitalized era, societal resilience depends largely on the stability and security of the digital world. It has since shown efforts to reach the optimum of such states by co-organizing a number of workshops and programs to train and build the digital capability of cyber professionals and policymakers, such as the Taiwan-U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation Dialogue in May and the GCTF International Workshop on Human Rights in the Digital Age in November this year.

In the face of its imminent elections, Taiwan needs to fight more intensely online manipulation attempts to jumble facts and disinformation, which could weaken its democracy and discourage healthy and active public engagement. It is the right of all Taiwanese citizens “to decide their next leader, free from outside interference,” Director Oudkirk affirmed, “Without public trust in free and fair elections, the ability of our democracies to thrive is at risk.”

She highlighted that “Cyberspace is truly a multistakeholder arena,” and encouraged organizations of all sizes and types, not just large-scale infrastructure providers, to also pay attention to how they can better manage, assess, and communicate their efforts to mitigate cybersecurity risks. She said, “robust industry engagement is essential to ensuring that cyber policies reflect the full expertise of all the key players in cyberspace,” advocating for private sector entities to be involved in Taiwan’s national efforts to maximize cyber resilience.

Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association is committed to Taiwan’s national mission of enhancing cybersecurity resilience. We launched the “Cyber Defense Network Project” in 2022 with hopes of enhancing Taiwan’s national defense capacity and digital resilience. Until now, we have published the Ukraine Cybersecurity Civil Action Guidebook after a year-long research, compiling valuable lessons that Taiwanese citizens could learn from the Ukraine crisis, 8 online courses providing a wealth of professional practical insights and case studies to increase citizens’ digital and media literacy, and an ongoing series of workshops and online forums to discuss and simulate digital preparedness.