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UN telecommunications agency partners with global coalition to combat cyber threats

UN telecommunications agency partners with global coalition to combat cyber threats

The United Nations telecommunications agency has teamed up with a global coalition headquartered in Kuala Lumpur to address issues related to cybersecurity, including analyzing and sharing information on threats, early warning and emergency responses.

The effort by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism (IMPACT) is in keeping with the call made at the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society to build security and confidence in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT).

The agreement signed by the heads of the two bodies today in Bangkok, on the sidelines of a major Asia-Pacific telecom conference, will operationalize the ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) at IMPACT’s state-of-the-art headquarters in Cyberjaya, Kuala Lumpur.

The GCA is a framework for global cooperation for governments, international law enforcement authorities, the private sector, international organizations and civil society to make cyberspace more secure in an increasingly networked information society.

The joint effort by the ITU and IMPACT – an initiative which brings together governments, industry leaders and cybersecurity experts to enhance the global community’s capacity to prevent, defend and respond to cyberthreats – aims to provide real-time analysis, aggregation and dissemination of global cyber threat information.

It also seeks to enhance early warning and emergency response to global cyber threats, as well as provide training and skills development on the technical, legal and policy aspects of cybersecurity.

Although the GCA will be housed at the IMPACT Centre, ITU will have a “virtual showcase” at its headquarters in Geneva of the early warning system, crisis management and real-time analysis of global cyber threats.