Promoting Global Cybersecurity

World Telecommunication Day (WTD) commemorates the founding of ITU on 17 May 1865. This year, WTD carries added significance as 17 May has been identified by the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society as “World Information Society Day”.

In today’s interconnected and increasingly networked world, societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure and in order to instill confidence in online trade, commerce, banking, telemedicine, e-government and a host of other applications, we need to strengthen our collective global cybersecurity. As this depends on the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, we need to develop a global culture of cybersecurity.

This is why, the ITU Council chose to highlight the serious challenges we face in ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems and adopted the theme Promoting Global Cybersecurity for World Telecommunication Day 2006.

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