Recently, Brendan Carr, a member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), made his first trip to Taiwan. During his visit to the moda, he said Taiwan is a trustworthy economic and national security partner, and expressed eagerness for both sides to deepen cooperation on cybersecurity matters.

Carr’s comments were not made lightly. Taiwan has achieved world leadership in the field of semiconductors and information and communication technology, boasting the world’s most comprehensive industry supply chain. Given Taiwan’s exposure to overseas cyberattacks, it also has a wealth of practical cybersecurity experience.

With recent rapid changes in the international situation, governments around the world have become increasingly concerned about the cybersecurity risks of technological products. For example, the U.K. announced its plans to completely remove Huawei’s 5G products by 2027. As a result, the moda is integrating industrial cybersecurity and the cybersecurity industry to create a trustworthy supply chain.

To strengthen industry cybersecurity, in January of this year, the world’s first semiconductor cybersecurity standard SEMI E187 was jointly developed by Taiwan’s industry, government, academia and research sectors. This standard allows businesses to confirm the safety of equipment provided by suppliers. In order to assist more businesses with its implementation, practical operation guidelines were released in October to help businesses assess whether their products meet the standards.

In the past, Taiwan businesses could only send their chips to overseas laboratories for safety testing. If a product failed the test, the business would need to modify the product and resubmit it for testing, leading to persistently high costs.

Now, the Chip Safety Joint Testing Laboratory, created by the moda’s Administration for Digital Industries, academia and private sector, enables local testing. This allows businesses to enter the international market more quickly and at a lower cost.

From these experiences, it is clear that cybersecurity has become a necessary investment for the semiconductor industry and, indeed, all sectors. Taiwan began promoting its Six Core Strategic Industries two years ago, which includes the increasingly important cybersecurity industry.

In recent years, there has been significant progress in both the quality and quantity of cybersecurity startups in Taiwan. To date, 28 cybersecurity startups have been established, with Laiyi Digital and Boe Technology each winning the top award in the cybersecurity field at the SelectUSA Investment Summit over the past two years.

The moda’s ADI, acting as a digital coach for all sectors, has also established Taiwan’s first cybersecurity practice hub, the Shalun Cyber Security Service Base. This facility strengthens industrial cybersecurity and promotes the cybersecurity industry.

The cybersecurity hub, in response to domestic and foreign cybersecurity incidents, has designed a dozen attack scenarios. For these scenarios, the moda has also collaborated with domestic cybersecurity businesses to develop defense strategies. Teams can not only apply and test their products here, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, but also further understand suitable solutions.

In other words, the Cyber Security Service Base is a training ground for cybersecurity companies, as well as a platform for matching supply and demand while gathering business opportunities in the cybersecurity industry.