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WSIS Forum 2010
High Level Debate: Cybersecurity & Cyberspace

9.00, Wednesday 12 May 2010
Geneva, Switzerland

Mr Houlin Zhao

Deputy Secretary-General,
International Telecommunication Union

  • It is my great pleasure to take part in this High-Level Debate on Cybersecurity and Cyberspace. Thank UNICRI and UNIDIR for the co-organization of the event.
  • Protecting cyberspace is a shared responsibility. No single entity or group of stakeholders can address the problem alone – and no individual or group is without responsibility for playing a part in cybersecurity. The technology industry, consumers, businesses and governments must all take steps to secure their own systems and to collaborate with each other to define and implement comprehensive cybersecurity policies and technologies.
  • Cybersecurity is not just about protection against current threats. It also yields the benefit of enabling greater and more sophisticated uses of the digital environment.
  • As you know, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process generated key principles and broad action areas to help guide our future work. That is why, as facilitator of WSIS Action Line C5 on Building Confidence and Security in the use of ICTs, ITU took the important step of launching the Global Cybersecurity Agenda, or GCA.
  • GCA represents the first international strategy to counter cybercrime and promote global cybersecurity. Designed as a framework for cooperation and response, it focuses on building partnerships and establishing effective collaboration between all relevant parties.
  • International cooperation is absolutely crucial to our success. Two great examples are IMPACT and COP.
  • IMPACT provides ITU’s 191 Member States with the expertise, facilities, information, and rapid access to resources necessary to effectively address actual and potential cyberthreats an almost 60 countries are already participating in this partnership.
  • The web can be a dangerous neighbourhood for children, who are often sent out into cyberspace alone and unprotected, simply because their guardians do not fully understand the risks. With this in mind, as part of the Global Cybersecurity Agenda, we also launched the Child Online Protection (COP) initiative, which was established by ITU and other stakeholders as an international collaborative network for action to promote the online protection of children worldwide. And I am pleased to see that one of the panellists, Mr John Carr, is one of the COP members.
  • Here at ITU, we have also been taking concrete actions within the Development and Standardization Bureaus.
  • The Development Bureau has finalized two key deliverables in the area of cybercrime: the “ITU Cybercrime Legislation Toolkit”, and “Understanding Cybercrime: A Guide for Developing Countries”. These are both part of our efforts to assist countries in understanding the legal aspects of cybersecurity and to help harmonize legal frameworks.
  • A new version of the “ITU National Self Assessment toolkit” has also been finalized by BDT and is now available.
  • Furthermore, following the MoU with IMPACT, a team in BDT has been set up to start the deployment of cybersecurity capabilities – specifically on Incident Management and the establishment of Computer Incident Response Teams (CIRTs).
  • In the Standardization Bureau, I am pleased to report that the recent meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 17 in April 2010 saw record attendance with a much increased number of delegates from developing countries. The group’s work programme contains more than sixty work items on topics as diverse as identity management (IdM), IPTV security, object identifiers (OID), formal languages and cybersecurity.
  • Furthermore, I am pleased to inform you that ITU-T’s Study Group 17 will hold a workshop on Addressing security challenges on a global scale in Geneva, on 6-7 December 2010. The event will focus on how ITU and other standards developing organizations (SDOs) address the main challenges of information and communication security.

Countries cannot easily close their borders to incoming cyber threats and cannot either contain those coming from within. Attempts to solve these challenges at national or regional levels are important, but they are undermined.

Cybersecurity is as global and far-reaching as the Internet.

Therefore solutions need to be harmonized across all borders. This necessarily entails international cooperation, not only at government level, but also with industry, non-governmental and international organizations.

In this regard, let me conclude by reporting to you that, in the spirit of “One UN”, the UN Chief Executives Board, recently asked ITU to lead joint actions to further strengthen cybersecurity within the UN system.