On 28 November, Zhang Bei, President of 360 Group, delivered a keynote speech titled “New Challenges of Cyber Security in the Digital Age” at the Technology Innovation and Smart City Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

Distinguished leaders and young friends,

Good afternoon! It is a great pleasure and honor to be here at this forum. I've made a lot of new friends and heard a lot of new ideas today, which are quite inspiring. I'm Zhang Bei, President of 360 Group.

The dramatic changes over the century combined with the COVID-19 pandemic have posed unprecedented challenges to the economic development, livelihoods, and governance of societies, while at the same time we have seen the positive side of it, which is that it has greatly contributed to the digital transformation of entire countries and societies, especially in China. Every industry is changing from being smart and intelligent to being digital. The pace of this iterating process is becoming faster.

Statistics show that in 2020, the volume of China's digital economy reached 41.36 trillion yuan, accounting for 40.7% of GDP. In Beijing and Shanghai, the digital economy accounted for over 50% of the local economy in 2020. As we see, when digitalization becomes a major trend in the economy and society, digital security and data security will be two of the few key issues. Though digitalization makes our life today better and more convenient, the danger of cyberattacks has also been magnified a thousand times, and unpredictable "black swan events" could occur at any time. We see that the digital age has three characteristics: first, everything is programmable; second, all things are interconnected; third, big data drives business. That means arising vulnerabilities for digital security. The so-called “everything is programmable” means the world of tomorrow, like the oft-mentioned metaverse, will be a software-defined world. There are loopholes everywhere. There is no network that can't be cracked. All things are interconnected, and an attack in the virtual world can convert into real harm in the physical world. The popularization of cloud technology among enterprises, industrial Internet, Internet of Vehicles, and Internet of Things blurs the boundary of online networks. Traditional isolation and network firewalls don't work anymore. In terms of big data-driven business, data security has never been more important. Data becomes a new target of attack. Directly attacking big data can paralyze many businesses. So, we say, when the tomorrow of metaverse is approaching, digital technology is beginning to be fully integrated into our lives. Accordingly, security risks will emerge in all scenarios in terms of infrastructure, industrial production, energy, transportation, healthcare, finance, urban and social governance, etc., which bring profound impact to national security, social stability, economic security, and even personal safety. These new scenarios are no longer faced with simple security issues of the past, but with unprecedented and complex challenges. We believe that the seven fundamental security issues of the digital age are big data security, cloud security, IOT security, new terminal security, network communication security, supply chain security, and application security. It can be said that we have shifted from a computer-security age to a network-security age and now to a sheer digital-security age. If the future digital world is compared to a "barrel", IOT, Artificial Intelligence, 5G, edge computing, and other technologies will be the "staves" of the barrel, and safety is the "base", whereas "water" in the barrel is the application scenarios for the digital economy and digital life. If the base cannot be guaranteed, then it cannot hold a drop of water. No matter how great a vision is, all will be in vain. That’s why digital security has become the "base of digitalization".

We see technology always has two sides. Neither can we turn a blind eye to risks, nor can we abandon technology just because of these risks. Technological issues can be solved by technological solutions. Faced with complex security challenges, we need to solve arising security issues with a systematic outlook. Looking back on the path we've taken, we have always focused on the security capabilities in practice, embarking on a new path different from those taken by traditional network security enterprises. In the age of computer security, we launched a variety of popular products such as 360 anti-virus, 360 security guard, and so on, which have improved the level of computer security for everyone in China. With the unique business model of "supporting the Internet with security and ensuring security with the Internet", and with a cumulative investment of over 200 billion yuan over the past decade, we have cultivated a top cyberattack defense team with more than 200 members. Yesterday we saw a piece of news. We are among China's top 10 Internet companies, and we are the only digital security company among those top 10 Internet companies. In the era of network security, we realize that only by aggregating the security data of the whole network from all dimensions across time and space can we adopt a holistic approach to study attack behaviors. Therefore, we have the world's largest security big data and sample database of cyberattacks from our experiences in dealing with security issues. After analysis, we've established a globally unique knowledge base of cyberattacks, and set up a cloud-based security brain with big data analysis as its core. All these will develop a powerful early warning capability in cyberspace, thus dealing with "visible" advanced attacks.

As we look to the future, if we want to solve the complex security challenges of digitalization in the era of digital security, we have to reshape network security; develop a new strategy, new frameworks, new technologies, and new capabilities for digitalization; and create a new system of digital security capabilities. As for the new strategy, we have integrated security systems and digital systems, offensive and defensive capabilities, and control capabilities. The key is to gather data from the whole network, establish a global perspective, and centralize analysis to achieve both offensive and defensive as well as internal and external results. Guided by this new strategy, we've built a security capability framework with the security brain as its core and four major types of infrastructure including attack defense, resource management, data maintenance, and expert operation. As for new technologies, in order to address digital security issues over these years, we've made efforts to develop innovative technologies and obtained core technology patents. Based on security capability frameworks, we could develop a system with new capabilities that can be operated sustainably and grow continuously to address complex security challenges and support various digital scenarios. At present, our security capability system has landed in more than 10 cities, including Chongqing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Suzhou. We've also cooperated with 90% of the national ministries and commissions, 80% of state-owned enterprises, 95% of large financial institutions, and all telecom operators on cyber security. We sincerely hope that through our expertise and efforts, we can help create a better and safer world on our march towards the era of digitalization. 

Thank you!