GPPi contributes to international workshop on Confidence Building Measures in cyberspace

From 20 – 21 June 2013, Tim Maurer, a GPPi fellow and policy analyst at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, contributed to an international workshop on confidence building measures (CBM) and international cyber security, hosted by the Switzerland-based ICT4Peace Foundation.

The goal of the workshop was ​“to develop a better common understanding of practical CBM’s to be applied to the cyberspace, based inter alia on concrete experiences of incidents and threats, that are relevant to build trust and rapid response systems to avoid potential conflict.”

CBMs are the umbrella term for actions taken by governments to reduce the likelihood of conflict and to prevent misperceptions and accidental crisis escalation. The ​“red telephone” of the Cold War is the popular image of CBMs, which include direct communication lines as well as information sharing and early warning systems to build trust and predictability among states. Discussions about CBMs for cyberspace have been picking up speed in recent years, and the workshop took place at a particularly opportune moment.

Earlier that week, the US and Russia announced that they will create a new working group focused on cyber threats, links between their computer emergency response teams, a White House-Kremlin direct secure communications line, and exchange notifications through the existing Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers. Earlier in June, experts from 15 countries – including the permanent five of the UN Security Council plus India, Japan and Germany – adopted a consensus report under the auspices of the United Nations, emphasizing the importance of confidence building measures. And in July, Chinese and US officials held their inaugural meeting of a newly formed working group on cyber-security ​“to speed up action to prevent hacking attacks,” according to the BBC.

Click here to read the conference report.