Zhou Hongyi Highlights the Growing Threat of Cyber Warfare and the Need for Advanced Security Intelligence

On August 8, at a digital summit in Sanya, Zhou Hongyi, chairman and CEO of 360 Group, addressed hundreds of CTOs and CIOs about the escalating threat of cyber warfare, citing a U.S. infrastructure committee’s assessment that this year’s cyber risk is the greatest since 9/11.

He recalled the 2017 WannaCry ransomware as a rehearsal for state‑level cyber conflict and listed recent incidents – U.S. attacks on Russian power grids, Iranian forces on New York’s electricity, Russian intelligence data loss, India’s infrastructure breaches, and 360’s discovery of 40 cross‑nation APT groups.

Zhou outlined four fundamental changes in enterprise security in the cyber‑war era: the adversary has become a nation‑backed hacker force, critical infrastructure is the primary target, APT‑style tactics dominate, and the assumption that no system is invulnerable has shifted.

Emphasizing that vulnerabilities are inevitable because code is written by humans, he likened cyber attacks to invisible aircraft and proposed building a “national security brain” – a security‑big‑data platform that can detect and reconstruct attacks in real time.

360’s security brain leverages massive security data, threat‑intelligence feeds, a knowledge base, and the largest white‑hat community in the Eastern Hemisphere, making it one of the few companies worldwide capable of independently uncovering state‑level cyber operations.

At the same time, 360’s team swept the BlackHat competition, securing first and second places and marking the first Chinese victory in twelve years.

Zhou announced future plans to expand 360’s enterprise security services by constructing a nationwide security‑big‑data and intelligence ecosystem, crowdsourcing hacker talent into a “hacker cloud,” and helping organizations build red, blue, and white teams for continuous defense and response.