14 - 15 May, 2025
Geneva | Switzerland
Internet Society / Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE)
The Internet Society (ISOC), in cooperation with the GFCE, are pleased to invite you to attend a training program on how to use encryption to secure government data and digital services, organised during the GC3B.
Encryption plays a vital role in protecting data from unauthorized access and maintaining privacy. Its importance extends across various industries, but becomes especially critical within government organizations, where sensitive information is regularly transmitted. By effectively leveraging encryption technologies, we can safeguard ourselves from cyber threats and improve the overall security level of our government systems.
The training session aims to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of government encryption, and its application in securing sensitive information. The topics discussed in the session cover both technical and policy aspects, including how governments are using encryption and how encryption can help protect your government and citizens.
Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) / Microsoft / Sweden / International Telecommunication Union
Digital transformation is revolutionising the world in unprecedented ways, serving as a potent force for sustainable development and aiding in the pursuit of the SDGs. A collaborative initiative involving ITU, Microsoft, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, and the GFCE has arranged a series of workshops and consultations running since July, focusing on the intersections between cybersecurity and digital development—a key theme for this conference. These sessions have gathered a wealth of insights, forming the basis for a comprehensive guide involving multiple stakeholders, scheduled for release in early 2024. This guide will propose recommendations for further integration and practical steps.
During the GC3B consultation, participants will delve deeper into the convergence of digital development and cybersecurity discussions, contributing additional insights to the evolving compendium. The co-champions are working towards establishing crucial technical, legal, and policy frameworks, aiming to assist all countries in implementing global cybersecurity norms. The project also seeks to heighten awareness regarding the significance of cybersecurity for sustainable development and encourage dialogue across various sectors and regions.
World Economic Forum / DAI/Digital Frontiers
As cybersecurity threats exploit vulnerabilities in our digital spaces, citizens’ awareness of these threats can act as a much-needed first line of defense. Nevertheless, citizens and businesses alike still need trained cybersecurity experts who can provide guidance on how to mitigate cyber risks, implement comprehensive cybersecurity strategies, and increase cyber resilience. Yet, with a global shortfall of over 3.4 million cybersecurity workers, there is an urgent need to find innovative approaches, including hip-hop stars, bloggers, and comic strips among others, to inspire, encourage, and foster a new generation of cybersecurity talent.
Despite the growing need to elevate levels of cyber preparedness and resilience in developing countries, cybersecurity and cyber capacity building efforts are often underprioritized and underfunded. Mobilizing domestic funding for cybersecurity activities can be particularly burdensome for countries with limited resources and many other competing development priorities. To support developing countries in strengthening their digital economies, safeguarding their digital transformation, and increasing their cyber resilience, international development finance institutions, such as the World Bank, are providing resources and technical assistance that can help client countries identify, select, prioritize, and finance specific cybersecurity activities or solutions. Drawing on the experience of countries that have successfully integrated cybersecurity activities into development projects, there are lessons to be learned as well as good practices and models for the implementation and expansion of such cybersecurity activities as components of development projects.
The security of LEO satellites, cloud infrastructure, and subsea communications cables is interwoven in the fabric of our modern communications and data landscape. Each one represents a critical piece of the global communications and data infrastructure, and their security and resilience ensures the seamless and safe operation of the essentialservices that societies across the globe depend on. Ensuring the integrity and security of each is critical for the stability and safety of global communications, and, by extension, for strengthening economic growth and ensuring the general wellbeing of people across the globe. Exchanges of lessons and good practices on how public and private actors are integrating cyber security features into their LEO, cloud and/or subsea infrastructure and on how relevant risk models are evolving can help build resilience against cyber threats, ensure data privacy and maintain the integrity of the infrastructure.
In the era of digital interdependence, the ability of criminal justice authorities to deal effectively with the challenges posed by cybercrime and electronic evidence is critical for economic growth and democratic governance. Over the past decades, the international development community has invested in numerous initiatives to enhance capacities and cooperation in the fight against cybercrime. Yet, externally facilitated activities, such as training courses, may lack ownership, proper monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and ultimately sustainability. Conversely, locally-driven, self-designed capacity building initiatives offer a more promising avenue for engagement and long-term change.
With generative artificial intelligence, decentralized finance, emerging prospects of quantum computing coming on policy makers’ agendas, it is necessary to think about how strategies, legislation, regulation and capacity building programmes can help all countries, but in particular those from the Global South, to prepare their societies, workforces and economies for the upcoming evolution of ICTs and digital tools available on the global marketplace. Some estimates put the additional economic numbers of generative AI alone at 900 billion worldwide, making it imperative that developing countries are able to take advantage of these opportunities in a way that maximizes benefits, while safeguarding their markets and people from potentially destabilizing or exploitative aspects of such developments.
In parallel, it is necessary to do a sober accounting of the challenges, ethical concerns, regulatory hurdles and potentials for misuse of the technology, especially generative artificial intelligence. States, academic, regional and International organizations, and public-private partnerships have sought to address these considerations through ethical and impact analysis, and proposing legal and regulatory frameworks for national adoption that would guarantee a light-touch adoption of the technology, the protection of human and intellectual property rights and equipping key sectors and public agencies with the skills necessary to mitigate the harmful effects of artificial intelligence.
The session will see speakers from the private sector, States leading the charge of AI regulation and international organizations doing the same to discuss what the applications, threats and challenges to the promulgation of AI solutions are, and what the horizons of the emerging AI regulatory frameworks is.