Opinion: Why is Internet security of vital importance?
CGTN
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(Photo: CGTN)

Editor’s note: Du Yuejin is the director of the Guizhou Big Data Security Engineering Research Center, and vice president and chief security expert of Alibaba Group.

There is a saying that, in order to prevent mankind from building a high tower to heaven, God made people speak different languages, meaning they can't communicate and coordinate effectively, and the human's tower plan could not continue.

Today, human beings are about to build another such high tower: It's called the Internet. It can bring unprecedented progress to the mankind and bring revolutions in health, technology, life, education, and many more areas. Today, this ‘high tower plan’ is once again on the edge of being dismantled, this time because of the threat of Internet security.

Internet security issues come from three sources.

First, bad guys. They saw the opportunities brought by the global connectedness of the Internet and acted quickly to make it a weapon, using it to arbitrarily steal property, harm others and cause netizens to panic, stifling innovation and development.

Second, political power. They also saw the Internet as an omnipotent feature in people's lives and hoped to weaponize it for political use. This may bring unprecedented harm to human beings, and bring disaster to the Internet itself.

Third, from people who are frightened. They see risks everywhere and are scared that their interests are damaged, so they have developed various conservative policies in the name of security.

These policies will actually destroy the connectivity of Internet and the flow of data, and undermine the creativity and synergy of human beings on the Internet, which will make the Internet lose its value, and the ‘high tower plan’ will completely fail.

If we can't solve these three types of problems, humans may become the victims of the Internet they invented, and the new 'high tower plan' will be destroyed again.

The Internet is just a tool, but its a very powerful one. If we can use it well, it will become the tower that can benefit mankind. If the bad guys use it better than we do, it can become a weapon to destroy humanity.

If we panic and give up trying to use the Internet to solve problems , it will fall into the hands of bad guys because they will not be restricted by the rules we made.

Therefore, the solution lies in the need to recognize the unbelievable value that the Internet can bring to the progress of society, to prevent the Internet from becoming a weapon for the bad guys, and to jointly prevent the Internet from becoming just another way for humans to harm each other.

The most important part is to make the positive value of the Internet very clear. For instance, when we make security policies, we should ask, ‘What will this security policy for development,’ and make sure we never tear the high tower down again.