Represented by Georges Sebek, Counsellor of the ITU-T Study Group 17
Good morning ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the Director of the Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau of the
ITU, Malcolm Johnson, I would like to thank the organizers of this – fifth -
ETSI Security Workshop for inviting ITU and extend my best wishes to you all for
a successful event.
ITU has an ongoing dialogue on how standards can help build confidence in the
use of ICTs and help win the war against cyber-threats. And, as you know there
are many areas of standardization where ETSI, an ITU-T Member, and ITU
collaborate.
And in this crucially important field of security we work together on NGN,
identity management and cybersecurity.
In the field of cybersecurity, our two organizations have organized symposiums
and workshops with cross participation of our experts. Many ETSI members are ITU
members, and this membership commonality helps ensure good collaboration and
cooperation. Indeed, our common goal of securing networks, services and
applications can only be achieved with the participation of all players. I am
therefore pleased that ITU can again actively participate in your fifth security
workshop.
We are in a constant fight against cybercrime and, within ITU the work of ITU-T
Study Group 17 is an essential part of our effort to meet the role entrusted to
ITU by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS); that is to build
confidence and security in the use of ICTs.
Not only will SG 17's standards increase the level of security, they will also
reduce the costs of building secure systems, as was recognized at last year’s
World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08).
Mr. Arkady Kremer the chairman of Study Group 17 will provide some more detail
on SG 17's work later today.
ITU has been active in security work for ICTs for many years and, as network use
has increased, the workload has grown quite dramatically in response to new and
evolving threats and the demands of our members for standards to help counter
these threats.
As standards makers, ITU and ETSI have a duty to serve our members and the users
of systems around the world with a coordinated approach towards protecting ICT
systems.
We can do this by maintaining an awareness of security issues, by ensuring that
security considerations are a fundamental part of specifications, and by
providing technical standards and guidance to assist implementers and users in
the task of making systems and services sufficiently robust that they can
withstand cyber attacks.
Standardization is a key building block in constructing a global culture of
cybersecurity.
Ongoing ITU work on security includes architecture and frameworks;
cybersecurity; vulnerabilities, threats and risk management; incident handling
and traceback; countering spam; telebiometrics; information security management;
identity management; security for NGN, IPTV, home networks, ubiquitous sensor
networks, mobiles; and secure application services.
We are also starting to look at security concerns in emerging areas such as
smart grids and cloud computing.
I do not want to take up too much more of your time but before finishing I would
like to highlight another area that was raised as a major concern at WTSA. This
is the problems being faced, especially by developing countries, due to the lack
of conformity and interoperability of equipment being placed on the market. An
important step was taken at last year’s ITU Council on how ITU could do more in
this area. I was very pleased therefore to receive an invitation from the ETSI
Director General to discuss how we can establish a good basis for our
cooperation in this field, and I look forward to that discussion very soon.
Another major objective of course is bridging the standardization gap, by
increasing developing country participation in our work. ITU has 191 countries
as its members and most of course are developing countries. We have held a
number of events on this important topic in different regions in the last few
years and I am pleased to report that we now have many more countries
participating in our standards activity.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in the real (non-virtual) world risk management is well
understood and so the infrastructure has been developed to protect against
theft, fraud and other kinds of attack.
The virtual world should be no different. ITU’s work in partnership with ETSI
and many other bodies can provide the backbone for this risk-management
infrastructure.
I wish you every success for this workshop and look forward to hearing about
achievements and good prospects for future work. |
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