Taiwan has moved its homegrown cybersecurity standard for chipmaking machines from paper to real-world testing, a win for the island's grip on the global semiconductor supply chain.

• SEMI E187 is the first international chip-equipment security standard led by Taiwan, published in 2022 after years of work by TSMC, ITRI and a group of local suppliers.
• It grew out of the 2018 malware attack that shut down parts of Taiwan's biggest chipmaker and exposed how vulnerable factory machines are.
• The rules force equipment makers to build in basic protection before shipping: supported operating systems, safer network setups, malware and access controls, and activity logging.
• The Institute for Information Industry has become the world's first accredited lab able to actually test machines against the standard.
• Factories still run plenty of old software and hardware that can no longer be patched, which is the main way attackers get in.

Outlook: More certified labs are expected later this year, with approved certification bodies following, which would make the standard a practical requirement for equipment suppliers selling into chip fabs.