Cybersecurity entrepreneur brings Silicon Valley wisdom to China

Fan Yuan

After studying for eight years in Silicon Valley, Fan Yuan, a cybersecurity researcher and zealot, decided to come back home to contribute to China's security industry.

"As the Internet develops fast, how to use advanced and innovative technology to safeguard the cyberspace security is also important," said Fan, 40, president of DBAPPSecurity, a company specializing in the cybersecurity, during the second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

The company, with nearly 600 employees and based in the province's Hangzhou, was selected to be the "security protector" in the conference after its eight-year contribution to the cybersecurity in the country.

To provide better online services for participants, about 100 employees of Fan's company took 100 days to do preparation in the security detection, such as preventing Wi-Fi and the conference's official website from online attacks.

"What we wanted was to build up a safer online environment by applying to our innovative products and online services," Fan said. "For example, we've used big data technology to detect whether the official website and registration website is safe or not."

"The innovative technology is like a ‘physical examination', helping the websites trace their security loopholes or risks and then making an alert," he said. "In the past, what we did was to amend loopholes, but now we are preventing them."

Fan confirmed that studying and developing such the technological product cost them more than three years, "but the cybersecurity deserves us to do."

In such a fast developing Internet era, "it's in great demand of the innovation to upgrade the protection of the cybersecurity," he said. "The security protection is a long-term project and may not see any effect in early stage, even though we do a lot. But I believe the future is bright if we carry on."

He suggested governmental departments and enterprises to enhance awareness to prevent their websites from being attacked. "The earlier we have the security awareness, the safer our products or online services will be."