Back to focus index
CIAO Focus, December 2010: Global Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity looms as the 21st century’s most vexing security challenge. The global digital economy hinges on a fragile system of undersea cables and private-sector-led partnerships, while the most sophisticated military command and control systems can be interfered with by non-state as well as state actors. Technology continues to race ahead of the ability of policy and legal communities to keep up. Yet international cooperation remains stubbornly difficult, both among governments as well as between them and the private sector—the natural leaders in everything cyber.
In 2007, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) set up a High-Level Experts Group to try to address the problem but progress is slow. The European Union and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) are working at the regional level. But it has only been in the past six months that public consciousness has started to grasp the scope and significance of the cybersecurity challenge. Pushed by a spate of revelations about cyber attacks worldwide, the media and key elites now seem to get it: cybersecurity is a fundamental problem that must be addressed across traditional boundaries and borders by the private and public sectors in new and cooperative ways.
--John Edwin Mroz, EastWest Institute
From the CIAO Database:
The Cybersecurity Agenda: Mobilizing for International Action
Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy
Oversight for Cybersecurity Activities
Cyberspace and the National Security of the United Kingdom: Threats and Responses
Securing the Information Highway
Outside Sources: *
Cybersecurity: Department of Homeland Security
http://www.dhs.gov/files/cybersecurity.shtm
Cybersecurity: National Security Council
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc/cybersecurity
Interpol: Information Technology Crime
http://www.interpol.int/Public/TechnologyCrime/Conferences/6thIntConf/SpeechJML.asp
NATO: Defending Against Cyber Attacks
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49193.htm
* Outside links are not maintained. For broken outside links, CIAO recommends the Way Back Machine.