《TAIPEI TIMES》 Ministry forms advanced AI cybersecurity task force

The Digital Ministry has established an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) cybersecurity risk response task force to strengthen information sharing and jointly develop protection strategies with agencies responsible for critical infrastructure to respond to AI-driven cybersecurity threats.

"This year has been anything but quiet on the cybersecurity front. With artificial intelligence models now equipped with the ability to penetrate systems like professional hackers, the cybersecurity offensive and defensive landscape has changed. The speed and scale with which attackers are launching cyberattacks has made defense increasingly challenging," Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs Yang Jialing (杨佳灵) told attendees at this year's Taiwan Cybersecurity Incident Response Conference in Taipei on Tuesday.

The advanced artificial intelligence cybersecurity risk response team was established to be able to promptly communicate new information and policies to government agencies and critical infrastructure operators, she said.

The Cybersecurity Agency and the National Cyber ​​Security Institute (NICS) are fully aware of recent reports of artificial intelligence agent attacks and security vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language.

As part of the short-term strategy, the Digital Ministry has instructed government agencies and critical infrastructure (CI) operators to minimize the exposure of their systems to cyber threats, Yang Jialing said. They should also evaluate whether outdated systems need to be decommissioned, she said.

The Digital Ministry has also issued a vulnerability guide outlining principles for patching security flaws and is using artificial intelligence tools developed by major international technology companies, as well as locally developed tools, to scan for potential vulnerabilities in critical systems, she said.

Government agencies and critical infrastructure operators already have clearly defined cybersecurity defense frameworks and incident response procedures in accordance with the Information Security Management Law, Yang Jialing said, adding that the Digital Ministry, the Cybersecurity Bureau and NICS will work with industry to overcome the cybersecurity crisis.

The conference was hosted by Taiwan's Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center, which provides threat intelligence sharing, incident response coordination and international cooperation, she said.

Yang Jialing encouraged more companies to join the initiative and urged enterprises to take the alerts issued by the center seriously and apply necessary security patches in a timely manner.