Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me take this opportunity to welcome you again to ITU and thank you for
your continuous efforts over the past 8 months since we met for the first time
in October last year.
HLEG today comprises of 103 experts from governments, industry, international
and regional organizations, research and academic institutions from all parts of
the world.
During the past several months, I have been following up on the work of the
HLEG and have listened with great care to the exchanges. In some cases, there
are differences in views while in other cases you succeed to arrive at a common
understanding.
The challenges that the global community face in tacking the issues related to
cyber insecurity, cyber-threats and cyber-crime and all other forms of misuse of
information and communication technologies are daunting, global, increasing in
sophistication and they affecting even more users, businesses and governments.
No single country, organization or company can solve the challenges we face
alone.
The only way forward is for us to increase our level of organization and work
together in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. This however, requires
that someone takes the lead to facilitate the process of building synergies
among the stakeholders and to provide a framework where all interested entities
could collaborate.
ITU has been entrusted by world leaders to coordinate a global response to these
challenges. Calls from ITU Membership in decisions taken at ITU Plenipotentiary
conference in 2006 are also very clear. During the recent WSIS Action Line C5
meeting organized by ITU in May this year, participants again stressed the need
for action and for ITU take concrete actions.
It is time for us to transform our intentions, strategies, recommendations
and proposals into action.
I have always said that ITU cannot do this alone but someone needs to lead this
process and facilitate global multi-stakeholder cooperation. The Global
Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) was launched in May last year with this objective.
The High Level Experts Group (HLEG) of the GCA was established with the
following goals:
- To meet the Global Cybersecurity Agenda’s main goals in the areas of:
• Legal Measures;
• Technical and Procedural Measures;
• Organizational Structures;
• Capacity Building;
• International Cooperation
- To propose further refinements of these goals and in light of any new
developments in this field.
- To analyse current and future developments in cybersecurity, including
both threats and state-of-the-art solutions, anticipate emerging and future
challenges, identify strategic options, and formulate concrete,
action-oriented and precise proposals or recommendations to the ITU
Secretary-General.
This third meeting of the HLEG is very important because it’s a milestone for
the work of the HLEG as we discuss and work towards an agreement on the
recommendations that this Group will submit to me for consideration at the end
of this meeting today.
As you are all aware, the objectives of this 3rd meeting are to:
- Agree upon the set of recommendations on all five work areas.
- Present the Global Strategic Report on all five work areas.
As explained during the last HLEG meeting and other exchanges to HLEG
members, the outputs of the HLEG would serve two main purposes:
- The Global Strategic Report elaborated by HLEG in the five GCA work
areas will serve as a vital resource for the broader WSIS Stakeholder
community. It is expected that each stakeholder group will implement those
strategies that are within their area of expertise, in the spirit of global
cooperation, collaboration and building synergies. ITU, being a main
stakeholder itself [which is, after all, why ITU was chosen as sole
facilitator for C5], will also take account of those strategies in
accordance with its Constitution and the ITU Convention.
- Some of the HLEG Recommendations will also be used by me as input to
proposals to ITU Council 2008.
- Other proposals and recommendations will be transformed into concrete
activities within the framework of ITU Constitution and Convention.
The GCA is already entering a new phase with the growing support from many
players from governments, industry, regional and international organizations.
Just within the past month, some recent developments regarding GCA include:
- Collaboration with the global initiative IMPACT (launched by Malaysian
Prime Minister) which has offered its services and infrastructure to meet
the goals of the GCA and offered to be one of the GCA
- Discussions with leading Information Technology and Security companies
for collaboration.
- Requests from National Governments and Regional Organizations (e.g.,
African Union) for collaboration with ITU within the framework of the GCA
- A second Patron for the GCA from Africa – President of Burkina Faso
- Launch of the GCA Strategic Partnership Program
At the end of this meeting, it is my hope that the advice to be provided by
the HLEG in the recommendations and Global strategic report will add to the
momentum of this initiative and provide practical ways forward to addressing
some of the challenges we face in building a more secure and safer information
society for all nations and peoples.
I know that your time and energy are valuable and I greatly appreciate your
effort in making the GCA what it is today.
I wish you a successful meeting and look forward to your conclusions.
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