Tag Archive for: Cyberspace

WION Global Summit 2022: Now, wars are being fought in cyberspace, says Supa Mandiwanzira

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Supa Mandiwanzira, former minister of ICT & cyber security, Zimbabwe, speaking at the WION Global Summit said “in the world of the internet somebody sitting in London can announce the election results, you can’t control it”.

 

“The process of making laws is very bureaucratic, it can never be ahead of technology,” Zimbabwe’s former minister of ICT & cyber security said during the session on digital warfare.

Also Read: WION Global Summit 2022: Cyber war is a new war, says Barakat Alkindi

“The reality is that the politicians are understanding the risks when it comes to their power. Cyber security is right at the bottom of the list.”

“For as long we weaponise the internet, the fear is we will go back to an age where nobody cares. You cannot allow a few countries to invest and run the technology,” Mandiwanzira asserted.

Watch | WION Global Summit 2022: Is Ukraine caught in a frozen conflict?

“Wars have always been fought on land, air, sea and space. Now, wars are being fought in cyberspace, you are in a sense legitimising cyber attacks,” he added.

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

 

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G7 help Ukraine in cyberspace

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Image by Gerd AltmannFree data flow, sustainability and the framework conditions for digital technologies were actually the top topics for the G7 digital ministers’ meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Düsseldorf.

The war in Ukraine has upended the program: “Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine and its digital infrastructure has caused the G7 to not only put the topic on the agenda of the digital ministers’ meeting in Düsseldorf, but rather we stand more united than before in our joint efforts to protect our critical infrastructure from external enemies,” says Digital Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) Tagesspiegel Background.

To this end, there is to be a joint declaration on the cyber resilience of digital infrastructures, a draft of which was made available to Tagesspiegel Background in advance. In it, the G7 pledge that they will continue to help Ukraine defend its networks.

They are keeping quiet about what this looks like in concrete terms. Nevertheless, this support could also be one of the reasons why there has been no major digital damage in Ukraine so far. According to experts, some countries have sent support teams to Ukraine. At the same time, the country has already massively expanded its own cyberdefensive capabilities as a result of previous attacks.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine had highlighted the dependence of networked societies on digital infrastructure, especially telecommunications, and the corresponding vulnerabilities, the statement said: “We underline the importance of protecting the digital infrastructures of free societies against harmful interference and influence by authoritarian regimes.” Ukraine is applauded for maintaining communications networks under the most difficult conditions, it said.

Ukrainian Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov is scheduled to join the G7 ministerial meeting. He is to report on the current situation and activities in the cyber war.

There had been numerous attempts by the Russian government to damage or shut down Ukraine’s digital infrastructure with targeted cyber operations.

Microsoft security researchers recently published a report on Russian cyberwarfare in Ukraine: they observed an increase in attacks on the eve of the Russian…

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“You need to beat all of us to beat one of us.” The US Cyberspace Solarium transitions to a not-for-profit. US Federal Trade Commission plans 2022 rule-making.

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At a glance.

  • “You need to beat all of us to beat one of us.”
  • The US Cyberspace Solarium transitions to a not-for-profit.
  • US Federal Trade Commission plans 2022 rule-making.

National Cyber Director speaks at Cyber Beacon 2021.

The Cyber Beacon 2021 conference was hosted (virtually) by the National Defense University’s College of Information and Cyberspace, aka the “Cyber War College.” The US Department of Defense reports that recently confirmed National Cyber Director Chris Inglis appeared at the conference to discuss his new office’s objectives and undertakings. The goal of the office, he stated, is to “bring coherence, connectivity [and] leverage for all the parts that are already in this space, such that we propose, if you’re a transgressor in this space, you’ve got to beat all of us to beat one of us.” He went on to say that this approach indicates a shift in how the nation has been defending against cyberthreats in the past. “You need to beat all of us to beat one of us,” he stated, coining what some are calling a new motto. 

Cyberspace Solarium Commission plans transition to not-for-profit organization.

The Cyberspace Solarium Commission closed out its term on Tuesday night and, as SC Media reports the cybersecurity policy development effort accomplished what it set out to do, having codified approximately forty measures into law. With the commission’s term, agreed upon in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, now completed, leadership announced plans to convert the group into a nonprofit, affectionately called Cyber Solarium 2.0, in order to continue its work of pursuing recommended measures. Co-chairman Representative Mike Gallagher stated, “There’s no question it’s not going to be the same as 1.0…but I think because we’ve gotten the ball rolling with our colleagues…because we’re not starting from scratch. I’m still fairly confident that we’re going to be able to make progress next year.” That said, he admitted the group had already tackled most of the simpler measures, so future recommendations might be more difficult to codify. Future focus will be on Systemically Important Critical Infrastructure, as well as the establishment of a bureau of cyber…

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UNIDIR conference discusses confidence-building in cyberspace

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“Confidence building is a long journey. It has ups and downs. It gets pulled off course by different factors so a strong foundation in which to base our discussion is crucial to keep moving forward,” said Kathryn Jones, Head of International Cyber Governance, United Kingdom, during the 2021 Cyber Stability conference organised by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

The panel discussion, moderated by Samuele Dominioni, Researcher, UNIDIR, was convened to discuss the importance of confidence-building measures (CBMs) in reducing tensions among countries. The panel consisted of Gerardo Isaac Morales Tenorio, Coordinator for Multidimensional Security, Multilateral Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico; Yutaka Arima, Ambassador for Cyber Policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and Kaja Ciglic, Senior Director, Digital Diplomacy, Microsoft.

There are increased instances of states developing ICT (Information & Communications Technology) as an instrument of warfare which means it is crucial to develop confidence-building measures to reduce the risk of misperceptions and avoid conflicts.

Countries must elaborate on the role of ICT agencies, remarks Kathryn Jones

Role of regional collaboration: “The UN has a strong role in global confidence-building measures but we’ve seen regional organisations really pick up these confidence building measures and progress has tended to be faster at the regional level. It’s obviously easier to build confidence within an established relationship. Regional fora such as OSCE have resource pools which reduce the cost to individual states of having to build bilateral CBMs individually,” Jones told the gathering.

Leveraging United Nations: “…fills a gap by sharing experience and by providing a space in which avenues for collaboration and mutual learning can be established. The membership of the UN is a diverse group of states and all will never take the same approach with everything and we don’t need to but we do need to understand how other states see things and crucially, how they might act in cyberspace so as to avoid that misunderstanding and inadvertent escalation,” she explained.

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