China has passed a national security law that will allow the state to take “all necessary” steps to protect its sovereignty in areas like finance, religion and cybersecurity.
The wording of the law is quite vague, according to AP, and it calls for strengthened management over the internet and stricter controls against cyberattacks and state hacking.
It’s interesting that China, which operates a fairly expansive internet monitoring system, felt the need to push through a law on the subject, with the wording offering little detail on how the country will achieve its aims of fighting cyberattacks.
China cybersecurity
A senior party official, Zheng Shuna, said the country’s national security situation in general has “become increasingly severe”, which leads you to believe China has been on the receiving end of a swathe of online attacks.
The geopolitical cyber-hacking environment is a wondrous web of linked distaste, and acceptance, of the fact that state-sponsored hacking is a continuous threat. It has also fuelled a growing insecurity mindset, due to countless examples of alleged espionage.
For example, it was allegedly a Chinese group of hackers that accessed significant US federal data last month – a cybersecurity story that keeps growing and growing. Then another allegedly China-backed group worked out a way to bypass Tor and VPN in its own country.
At the end of last year, Bloomberg reported that China was even considering removing all foreign technology from any of its national security areas such as banks, military operations, as well as other state-owned operations.
Main image, via Shutterstock
