Economics & Global Affairs

As conventional wisdom goes, experts tend to rank the U.S ahead of China, U.K., Iran, North Korea, Russia, in terms of how strong it is when it comes to cyberspace. But a new study from Harvard University’s Belfer Center shows that China has closed the gap on the U.S. in three key categories: surveillance, cyber defense, and its efforts to build up its commercial cyber sector.

“A lot of people, Americans in particular, will think that the U.S., the U.K., France, Israel are more advanced than China when it comes to cyber power,” Eric Rosenbach, the Co-Director of Harvard’s Belfer Center, told CyberScoop. “Our study shows it’s just not the case and that China is very sophisticated and almost at a peer level with the U.S.”

The continual spread of Open Banking means that regulators and merchants in various markets are becoming more aware of the critical importance of security as data speeds increase. One of the more intriguing markets moving forward with financial innovation is China, where regulators have upgraded both banking and cybersecurity rules in recent years.

The rules — as with Europe’s regulations surrounding financial data collection and use — are intended to keep information safe, while fostering growth for banks and merchants. Since China is one of the more dominant markets in the world, its changing rules are a matter of interest for both lawmakers in neighboring markets and merchants looking to expand into the country.