Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who testified in front of the US Senate this week stated that Facebook is significantly increasing their investment in security. 

“We now have about 15,000 people working on security and content review. We’ll have more than 20,000 by the end of this year,” he added.

Mark’s remarks came when he was asked about Russia’s 2016 US Presidential election. He acknowledged that Facebook was too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference, and is working to improve its sophistication in handling these threats. The increased investment in security will enable it to handle these threats better and prevent another data breach scandal like the current one involving the firm Cambridge Analytica which improperly gathered detailed information on 87 million of its users. 

The Facebook CEO apologized for what happened and added it was important to make sure no one interferes in any more elections including in India.

“The most important thing I care about right now is making sure no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world,” he said.

As per his prepared remarks, Zuckerberg said that his firm “will hire thousands of more people” to verify pages and advertisers on its site before “the 2018 elections in the US as well as elections in Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the next year.”

Zuckerberg’s remarks are important given that in May 2019, India could see more than 133 million first-time voters at the polls and political parties will be leveraging platforms like Facebook to target voters.