U.S. President to meet with China over cyber attacks

President Barack Obama will discuss cyber attacks believed to have been at the hands of China when meeting President Xi Jinping next week, says the White House.

There have been a number of recent hacks on US websites thought to have been committed by cyber groups in China.

Xi will be visiting the U.S. for the seventh time. He met with President Obama during a friendly visit to Sunnylands, California in 2003.

Obama said then:

“And we can choose to make this an area of competition – which I guarantee you we’ll win if we have to – or, alternatively, we can come to an agreement in which we say, this isn’t helping anybody.”

A breach of personnel files belonging to the US government that exposed more than 20 million officials, including a number of very senior staff, has resulted in mounting tensions as a result of the suspicion that Chinese attackers were behind it.

The attack is thought to be the force behind Obama’s recent public statement, in which the president also talked up the possibility of Russian and Iranian cyber security matching the U.S. in cyber security technology.

This particular issue may seem, and may certainly be, worlds away from what the typical SME may experience, but breaches do happen, which is evident from recent news events. If a business does not realise the seriousness of the issue and fails to make cyber security jobs available to trained personnel, it may be next in line for such a breach.