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GCI 2017

​​The Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) is a survey that measures the commitment of Member States to cybersecurity in order to raise awareness.

The 2nd iteration of GCI was elaborated with an enhanced index, more open consultations and more partners.​ A multi‐stakeholder approach, that leverages the expertise of different organizations, with the objectives of improving the quality of the GCI, instigating international cooperation, and promoting knowledge exchange on this topic, has been formulated. ​

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The GCI revolves around the ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) and its five pillars (legal, technical, organizational, capacity building and cooperation). For each of these pillars, questions were developed to assess commitment. Through consultation with a group of experts, these questions were weighted in order to arrive at an overall GCI score. The survey was administered through an online platform through which supporting evidence was also collected.

One-hundred and thirty-four Member States (including State of Palestine) responded to the survey throughout 2016. Member States who did not respond were invited to validate responses determined from open-source research.​​

Background

The GCI is included under Resolution 130 (Rev. Busan, 2014) on strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of ICT. Specifically, Member States are invited “to support ITU initiatives on cybersecurity, including the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI), in order to promote government strategies and the sharing of information on efforts across industries and sectors”.

A first iteration of the GCI was conducted in 2013-2014 in partnership with ABI Research, and the final results have been published.

Secondary data was used to build the Index for non-respondents and was sent to them for verification/endorsement.

Following feedback received from various communities, a second iteration of the GCI was planned and undertaken. This new version was formulated around an extended participation from Member States, experts and industry stakeholders as contributing partners (namely World Bank and Red Team Cyber as new GCI partners joining the Australia Strategic Policy Institute, FIRST, Indiana University, INTERPOL, ITU-Arab Regional Cybersecurity Centre in Oman, Korea Internet & Security Agency, NTRA Egypt, The Potomac Institute of Policy Studies, UNICRI, University of Technology Jamaica and UNODC)​ who all provided support with the provision of secondary data, response activation, statistical analysis, qualitative appreciation amongst other.

The data collected via GCI 2017 for ITU-D Study Group 2 Question 3 (SG2Q3) surveys have been analysed by the Rapporteur and co-Rapporteur for inclusion in the SG2Q3 final report. GCI partners have been active in providing expertise and secondary data as appropriate, while the UN office of ICT (New York) has also initiated collaborative work. ITU is also working in a multi-stakeholder collaboration led by the World Bank to elaborate a toolkit on “Best practice in Policy/Legal enabling Framework and Capacity Building in Combatting Cybercrime”. ITU is providing support on the component on capacity building from a cybersecurity perspective based on GCI 2017 data.

An enhanced reference model was thereby devised. Throughout the steps of this new version, Member States were consulted using various vehicles including ITU-D Study Group 2 Question 3/2, where the overall project was submitted, discussed and validated.

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