Here’s Why Your Data Isn’t Safe in China: Investment in Security Just 1% of IT Industry Investment

The past few years have seen more than a few instances of users — sometimes tens of millions of them at a time — getting their data leaked, stolen, sold, or otherwise removed from web services they expected to be safe. Each hack or leak has its own technical explanation, of course, but here’s the bigger reason: investment in information security accounts for just one percent of overall investment in China’s IT industry.

That’s according to an anonymous industry association insider who spoke with China Business News. That number — one percent — compares pretty unfavorably to the United States and Europe, where investment in information security amounts to between 8 and 12 percent of overall industry investment. Why are Chinese companies lagging so far behind? According to the insider, it’s not so much a lack of cash as a different corporate attitude:

As far as they [small and midrange companies] are concerned […] they’ll just worry about it after [a hack or leak] occurs; if there hasn’t been a problem then they may not even think about [information security].

Obviously, that kind of attitude is going to lead to more hacks and leaks, so here’s hoping some of this past year’s more high profile cases can convince Chinese IT business owners that they need to take information security seriously. While users are often the ultimate losers — more than 60 percent of Chinese internet users are at “high risk” of having their data lost or stolen according to a Zecurion report cited in CBN — lost and stolen information leads to economic losses of more than 10 billion RMB ($1.5 billion).

[CBN via Sina Tech, Image via Shutterstock]