Increasing resilience of the cyber/ICT environment requires fostering international co-operation, say participants at OSCE high-level conference

VIENNA, 8 September 2020 – International co-operation and multilateral approaches are needed to maintain resilience and stability of the cyber-ICT environment, concluded participants of the high-level conference of the OSCE Albanian Chairmanship that ended today in Vienna.

Agron Tare, Deputy Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania said that securing the cyber ecosystem requires “engagement, collaboration and co-ordination amongst all relevant stakeholders to preserve a functioning and stable ICT environment.”

Deputy Minister Tare also stressed the role the OSCE plays in regional efforts to develop new ideas on establishing a stable cyber/ICT environment and putting those ideas into practice, thus contributing to global efforts.

“The OSCE – through its sixteen existing confidence-building measures - has provided us with a platform to build trust and capacities, enhance co-operation and reduce tensions that may stem from the use of ICTs,” Tare said, noting that it is important to make them work for all OSCE participating States.

Referring to the OSCE Informal Working Group, which set an example for how to drive co-operation forward in the field of cyber/ICT security, the Deputy Minister noted its flagship “Adopt-a-CBM” initiative, inaugurated in 2018 by the Hungarian Chair of the Informal Working Group established by Permanent Council Decision 1039. He noted that the initiative is “the most promising way ahead regarding the implementation of the confidence-building measures.”

Péter Sztáray, Minister of State for Security Policy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, said that the pandemic added a new threat to existing global challenges and, more than anything showed that all countries rely heavily on cyber/ICT technologies to maintain daily business, enable most critical infrastructure systems and drive economic and social growth. “In the future there will be an even heavier reliance on digital infrastructure. That is why international co-operation, a multilateral approach on both global and regional level is needed more than ever,” Sztáray said.

More than 200 high-level representatives from OSCE participating States, Partners for Co-operation, the United Nations, and other international organizations, academia and civil society participated in the conference, which took place in person at the Hofburg conference centre in Vienna and via videoconferencing.