The Executive Yuan is seeking to implement core infrastructure redundancy to provide emergency electricity, gas and communications in the event that primary systems are destroyed in an attack, a person familiar with the matter said.
The government is considering amendments to the Executive Yuan Internal Affairs Procedural Regulations (行政院處務規程) to allow it to transfer 10 or more staff to the Office of Homeland Security, which would oversee a core infrastructure redundancy program, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Under office director Ho Ta-jen (何達仁) and supervised by Minister Without Portfolio Wu Tze-cheng (吳澤成), the office would seek to implement redundancy systems for water, electricity, crude oil and the transaction system for the financial markets, they said.
Photo courtesy of the Taichung City Government
The Executive Yuan expects to dedicate the year to implementing redundancy systems and would inspect the results at the end of the year, they said.
The goal of the program is to create a backup or alternative system that would turn on in the event of infrastructure failures, either due to an external attack or hacking, they said.
The government also intends to create a backup system for the Taiwan Stock Exchange, so that it could be immediately restarted to minimize losses should it be paralyzed in a cyberattack, they said.
The office, working with the National Center for Cyber Security Technology, is already tasked with around-the-clock surveillance of key infrastructure facilities, they added.
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