In 2019, Dr. Eneken Tikk, Senior Advisor ICT4Peace Foundation, will offer her insights on the international cyber norms dialogue in monthly posts. These Cyber Norms Blogposts will highlight normative contributions from states, regional and international organizations, industry and academia that could be considered in the dialogue on responsible use of ICTs by States.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in these Blogposts are not necessarily those of the ICT4Peace Foundation.
Search for Cyber Norms – Where to Look?
#1 National Cybersecurity Strategies
At the UN, two working groups will be discussing responsible state behavior in cyberspace this year. Russia initiated an open-ended working group, where participation is open to all states, while the US opted for another group of 25 government experts to discuss voluntary and non-binding standards of behavior. Aiming at shared expectations towards responsible use of ICTs by States, there is hardly a better source for detecting the existence or emergence of such expectations than the cybersecurity strategies adopted since 2007, the year that led to securitization of the use of ICTs.
Finding normative aspirations in national cyber and information security strategies is possible by applying a reading to these documents that seeks to identify either explicit references to existing or aspired norms, or implicit preferences and priorities for normative action and overarching principles of national, even universal, conduct.
Strategies and policies point out principles and directions that governments claim to be adhering to or aspiring towards. They offer ways to reinforce, complement, and perhaps even correct, the current focus in the international cyber norms discourse. Principles and norms expressed in these instruments reveal promises and pleas of certainty, predictability and transparency.
Please read the entire article here.
Please find the article “2018: The year that cyber peace became non-binding” (author: Eneken Tikk) here.