Cybersecurity

Current situation and challenges

Cybersecurity has come to the forefront of the international diplomatic and political agenda in United Nations committees, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Council of Europe (CoE), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Commonwealth, the Group of Eight (G8), and the Group of Twenty (G20), to name just a few of the most important fora. In the meantime, attention to the possibility of cyber-war swings from hype to lack of attention, due to wide ignorance. Cybercrime, which is often part of our real life experience, is dealt with through a number of international processes, as the judicial and law enforcement authorities cooperate across borders. Many countries have adopted national cybersecurity strategies and related legislation. A growing number of countries have set up national mechanisms for response to cyber-incidents (mainly in form of CERT or CSIRT), involving government as well as the corporate, academic, and NGO sectors. Some have declared ‘cyber’ as the fifth military domain, and have set up defensive and offensive cyber-commands within their armies.

Nevertheless, the risks are increasingly sophisticated, while the groups interested in exploiting cyberspace vulnerabilities have extended from underground communities of ‘black-hat’ hackers to global and well-organised criminal and terrorist groups, government security services, and defence forces. To make things more complicated, most of the Internet infrastructure and services are privately owned, with operators scattered around different global jurisdictions.

Multidisciplinary and multistakeholder response

A meaningful systematic response to cybersecurity risks depends on a deep understanding of the multidisciplinary aspects of cyberspace: the nexus of technology, law, psychology, sociology, economy, political science, and diplomacy. Cybersecurity framework includes policy principles, instruments, and institutions dealing with cybersecurity. Thematically, it is an umbrella concept covering:

• Network security (including technical measures, organisational policies, standards and incident response)
• Cybercrime (including emerging challenges and frameworks to combating cybercrime)
• Internet safety (including user safety challenges and particularly child online protection)
• Critical infrastructure and resources  (including security of the critical infrastructure, and critical Internet resources)
• Cyber-conflicts and cyber-norms (including challenges, application of international law to cyberspace, and main processes)
• Terrorist use of the Internet (including tools, targets and frameworks for combating terrorism)

Setting up national and international cybersecurity policies and mechanisms, however, requires looking at a broader context, primarily the links of security with economic development (including innovations, e-commerce and intellectual property rights), human rights (including privacy, online freedoms and trust), and Internet governance in general.

The efficiency of the response further depends on partnerships among stakeholders that can contribute to reducing the risks:

• government and regulatory authorities with their ability to create a legal, regulatory, and policy environment for cybersecurity;
• judicial institutions and law enforcement authorities with their competences and responsibility for criminal prosecution and cross-border cooperation mechanisms;
• the private sector and technical communities with their expertise and de-facto control over the majority of infrastructure, services, and standards;
• non-governmental organisations and academia with their knowledge, networks, and capacity to reach out to end-users and alert them about the misuse of cyberspace.

Illustrations and animated videos

Images and animations are powerful tool to communicate digital challenges.

Diplo has prepared number of illustrations depicting cybersecurity challenges. Browse the gallery and pick any that can help you explain cybersecurity better.

How does DNSSec work? What is Deep Packet Inspection? Why do we need IPv6? What should we know about cloud computing? Watch the short animated movies of  Diplo's Internet Governance Lite series.

Watch the short videos on introduction to cybersecurity, cybercrime and spam from our Internet governance series

Send a postcard from cyberspace!

Diplo's illustrated cybersecurity postcards from cyberspace aim at raising awareness about main challenges and issues related to cybersecurity, while allowing us to send our own message to others.

Pick your favorite poscard, add your personal message - and share via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or print and give out to friends and colleagues!

You can find all the postcards available for sharing or download here.

Comic book on child safety online

The challenges of child safety online presented in form of a comic book. Read online in English and in French.