The International Cybersecurity Dialogue sent two delegates to the Budapest Second International Conference on Cyberspace October 3-5, 2012; the second in a global triad of conferences initiated by the United Kingdom in November 2011 which concludes in South Korea October, 2013.  The effort seeks to integrate nations’ international best practices and security. ICD Founder Anne C Bader and The Senior Fellow, Richard Stiennon joined 900 delegates from 70 countries.  The majority of delegates represented governments with multinational business and a few nongovernmental organizations.

The conference represented an expansive view from policy, business, e-crime, (Budapest Convention) youth, Hungarian innovative tech start ups. Richard and I both noted progress since last year’s London conference discussions to actual shared program solutions in security, information sharing, best practices, accountability and education.

Four obvious challenges to true international integration persist.  First is the observable hardening of differences between countries supporting freedom of the internet access and countries requiring top down regulatory control of access and information.  Second are objections based on a Russian concept of sovereignty to some nations’ acceptance of the Budapest Convention on e-crime.  Third is the concern voiced by international business that governments operating on a much slower timetable would threaten their own trust based networks based upon more timely business requirements. Fourth is the urgent need to build capacity in awareness, capability and resilience.  In this regard, UK Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State William Hague announced “ a new Centre for Global Cyber-Security Capacity Building in the United Kingdom, and we will be investing £2m a year to offer countries independent advice on how to build secure and resilient cyberspace, improving co-ordination and promoting good governance online.”