'More cybersecurity awareness needed' as challenges grow

China must raise people's overall awareness of cybersecurity and strengthen research and development of core technology in the sector to better address mounting challenges, top Chinese network security experts said at a conference in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Thursday.

The 13th China Cyberspace Security Annual Conference, hosted by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Coordination Center of China, covered a range of cyberspace topics, including security threat intelligence, cybersecurity talent development, security vulnerabilities and mobile internet and data security.

About 900 people from institutes, the government and domestic and foreign enterprises attended the three-day event, which started on Tuesday.

According to the 2015 China Internet Network Security Report, which the center issued during the conference, the center received 126,916 reports on network security incidents from home and abroad last year, an increase of 126 percent from 2014.

The three main targets of cyberattacks in China are government departments, financial agencies and basic telecommunication enterprises, the report said. The most common network security concerns are webpage counterfeiting and security vulnerabilities, it added.

Huang Chengqing, director of the center, said that the security capabilities of the cloud platform and big data in China will face big challenges this year. Equipment involved in the Internet of Thing swill face more security threats, and network fraud and racketeering in China will become more rampant this year, Huang predicted.

In the past year, the security protection level of China's basic telecommunication network improved, and so did its domain name system's ability to resist server attacks, the report said.

"But China's industrial internet faces harsher security challenges, and the advanced persistent threat to China's important information system became more severe last year," said Wu Jianping, an academician in computer science at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

According to the report, the security condition of China's public internet is generally stable, and the security of the main telecommunication operators has improved. But the number of personal information leaks rose, it said.