Technological innovations mean it will generate more data to secure. This is how Taiwan’s IT (information technology) landscape is shaping as it seems innovations as an opportunity for more cybersecurity services.

In the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) recently, Taiwan is ranked fourth globally in terms of innovation capability, which helps increase its cybersecurity industry value, achieving $1.26 billion in 2017, according to Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

In Asia-Pacific, the dominant players in the cybersecurity realms are from the United States and Israel. Taiwan has always been known for its global semiconductor and manufacturing sector that allowed it to cultivate its home-grown cybersecurity industry.

“Taiwan’s key strength of creating proprietary technology along with strong R&D capabilities has granted the country a competitive edge to capture growing cybersecurity’s demand in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Vivien Pua, research analyst, Cyber Security, Frost & Sullivan.

“The prioritization of technological innovation abilities and competence helps to keep pace with evolving cybersecurity needs, provides a significant economic opportunity for the cybersecurity industry,” she added.

The mix of well-established vendors and innovative startups make up for most of the cybersecurity industry. The longstanding vendors have extensive experiences in supporting leading large enterprises in the domestic market and have demonstrated capabilities to support large-scale businesses. Security solutions from vendors like BOX Solutions, Cellopoint, CHANGING, CHT Security, GOTrust, Jrsys and Trustview are widely adopted by the government, financial and manufacturing sectors in Taiwan. Some vendors like FineArt and Openfind, for example, have taken the additional step of expanding their business footprint further afield to mature neighboring markets like Japan for more than 15 years.

Taiwan’s government is also making efforts to groom Taiwan’s cybersecurity industry, with an increasing number of R&D-intensive start-ups emerging. Some of these start-ups like ARCRAN, Authentrend, Datiphy, ECO-LUXURY, PIXIS and XCome are focused on tackling cyber security threats around the Internet of Things (IoT), traditional authentication methods, managing the growing BYOD trend and helping manage the increased risk associated with critical business data assets.

Given Taiwan’s unique strengths and technological advantages over its Asia-Pacific counterparts, the cybersecurity industry could potentially harness the significant economic opportunity arising from the growing demand for cybersecurity, not only at the national level but also at the regional level.

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