LAS VEGAS, the United States — A US expert highlighted the progressive cooperation between the United States and China in cyber security, as companies strive for better solutions and top hackers started their annual meetings here on Saturday.

US-China co-op highly valued

Susan Shirk, Chair of the 21st Century China Center of University of California, San Diego, noticed that the bilateral cooperation evolved since leaders of the two countries met in April.

"Then we went to the G20 and tried to make it a global norm. So I think this is a great example of how the US and China through frank negotiation can address a very difficult topic to make progress and then to move forward," she told Xinhua.

As enterprises need to strengthen their defense to make their own systems secure, government efforts are equally important to address the issue, said Shirk.

"I do think it's the governments' responsibility to try to work at the government to government level. We'd like to see government crack on it," she added in a recent interview.

Tech firms always on alert

While governments remain active, IT producers are on high alert and intensively prepared to counter any attack.

"We have many layers of open security, encryption capability, fault tolerance capability, buffering, and so on. There is a lot of capability that Intel can bring, but there a lot of third parties out there that will bring that to the table," Jon Marshall, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer of Intel, told Xinhua.

Keith Shank, director of Advanced Technology Labs of Ericsson, also took a hardened stance.

"Ericsson is working to make extreme robust networks that can tell what's been hacked. Not necessarily stopping, because that's really hard to do. However, you (can) know what's been impacted, so you can avoid it," Shank said.

Thorsten Held, managing director at White Encryption Code and Data Protection, emphasized the importance of web safety for automobiles.

"If anyone tries to modify the application, our system will set off some kind of alarm, which will recognize there is a modification, which can be classified as an attack and stop the execution," Held said.

On Wednesday, the Cyber Readiness Institute (CRI) was launched as a joint project between the Center for Global Enterprise and the Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade.

The non-profit organization will bring together senior leaders of global companies to discuss best practices for managing security employees, processes and technology.

Hackers are restless

In the battle field of IT, winner is always closely followed by challengers. Winner can be turned into underdog any minute.

In the city known as the gambling capital of the world, the annual Black Hat Conference opened on Saturday with its training session in the traditional high-stake style, where the bettors are cloak and dagger and the outsiders including the media are hard to get a chance to peek into the risks they take.

The conference was initiated in 1997 to involve system and network administrators, hackers and computer security experts, as a pal event of DEF CON, whose annual meeting will start on July 27 when the Black Hat is concluded.

DEF CON was created in 1993 as one of the world's largest hacker conventions, held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During the Black Hat Conference, researchers will release an open-source SS7 firewall that aims to bolster security of mobile operators' core networks.

SS7 vulnerabilities, which can allow cyber criminals to hijack two-factor authentication codes texted to mobile phones, read and re-direct text messages, eavesdrop on phone calls, and track a phone's location, have existed since 2014.