An Introduction to Internet Governance, 5th Edition

Page 74

Internet Governance

Type of target. Potential targets are numerous, ranging from individuals, private companies, and public institutions to critical infrastructures, governments, and military assets.

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Cybersecurity policy initiatives Many national, regional, and global initiatives focus on cybersecurity. At national level, a growing volume of legislation and jurisprudence deals with cybersecurity. The most prominent legal initiatives are those in the USA linked to the fight against terrorism where the Department of Homeland Security is the main institution dealing with questions of cybersecurity. It is difficult to find any of the developed countries without some initiative focusing on cybersecurity. At international level, the ITU is the most active organisation; it has produced a large number of security frameworks, architectures, and standards, including X.509, which provides the basis for the public key infrastructure (PKI), used, for example, in the secure version of HTTP(S) (HyperText Transfer Protocol (Secure)). Recently, the ITU moved beyond strictly technical aspects and launched the Global Cybersecurity Agenda.74 This initiative encompasses legal measures, policy cooperation, and capacity building. The G8 also has a few initiatives in the field of cybersecurity designed to improve cooperation between law enforcement agencies. It formed a Subgroup on High Tech Crime to address the establishment of 24/7 communication between the cybersecurity centres of member states, to train staff, and to improve state-based legal systems that will combat cybercrime and promote cooperation between the ICT industry and law enforcement agencies. The United Nations General Assembly passed several resolutions on a yearly basis on ‘developments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of international security’, specifically resolutions 53/70 in 1998, 54/49 in 1999, 55/28 in 2000, 56/19 in 2001, 57/239 in 2002, and 58/199 in 2003. Since 1998, all subsequent resolutions have included similar content, without any significant improvement. Apart from these routine resolutions, the main breakthrough was in the recent set of recommendations for negotiations of the cybersecurity treaty, which were submitted to the UN Secretary General by 15 member states, including all permanent members of the UN Security Council. A major international legal instrument related to cybersecurity is the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, 75 which entered into force 68


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