Qihoo 360, China’s biggest cybersecurity firm, wants to become China’s cyberwarfare defender

Qihoo 360 is the largest cybersecurity firm in China. It also has big plans for China’s national cybersecurity defense. Founded in 2005, it has managed to quickly become the most popular antivirus solution in China despite complaints of bloatware and other controversies.

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Qihoo 360 has been a huge success, but its path has been mired controversy. (Picture: AFP Photo)

Published: 5:30pm, 25 Jun 2019Updated: 8:09am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Qihoo 360 is the biggest cybersecurity company in China, but few people in the rest of the world know the name. These days, however, it’s taking an increasingly important role in China’s cybersecurity efforts.

On June 19, 2019, as the tech war between China and US raged on, Qihoo 360 CEO Zhou Hongyi announced that the company has been developing a cyberspace radar system to fight sophisticated cyberwarfare attacks. During a talk at the China Internet Security Conference (ISC), Zhou said that Qihoo 360 had discovered 40 intrusions from hackers in other countries and regions.

The company has been vying to become a key member of the country’s national cybersecurity strategy since it abandoned the US stock market to perform a backdoor listing in China in 2018.

“(Cybersecurity) is a very special industry, no matter if it’s Chinese or Russian or American, as long as a cybersecurity firm grows big enough, it needs to be aligned with national interests,” Zhou said at the time.

Qihoo 360’s CEO and president Zhou Hongyi has earned a reputation as an outspoken and demanding boss. (Picture: Simon Song/SCMP)

However, Qihoo 360’s beginnings were not as lofty as its current ambitions. It was founded in 2005 when Zhou Hongyi quit his job as president of Yahoo China and joined his colleague Qi Xiangdong, former vice president of Yahoo China, to create a search engine.