Cybercrime and the fight against are no longer a niche topic: the economic repercussions alone are too high, costing the Federal Republic of Germany over 200 billion euros annually according to an estimate from the industry association Bitcom. Other costs, however, such as the social and political issues that can aggravate domestic tensions or even fan international crises, are rarely at the forefront of discussions.

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Jantje Silomon

Breaking encryption: Once More unto the Breach, dear Friends, Once More

While the West was settling down to the Christmas holidays and looking forward to a quiet turn-of-the-year, a group of researchers uploaded a paper to arxiv.org, an open-access repository with over 2 million scholarly articles. The paper’s title “factoring integers with sublinear resources on a superconducting quantum processor” is again nothing that would necessarily draw the attention of non-specialist outlets. However...

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Emilia Neuber, Mischa Hansel

Advancing UN Cyber Norms: Multilateral Peer Review Mechanisms as a Way Forward - Part II

Technical indicators, standards, and criteria do not set peer review apart from other review mechanisms. Rather, it is the political authority of a state-led process as opposed to an evaluation by, say, a technical secretariat of an UN treaty body. One benefit of such political salience is the visibility of the process.

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Emilia Neuber, Mischa Hansel

Advancing UN Cyber Norms: Multilateral Peer Review Mechanisms as a Way Forward - Part I

Peer review mechanisms are widely used to facilitate the implementation of regulations and guidelines in various policy areas, including for example cybersecurity certification or ICT risk assessment. However, such mechanisms might also offer a new approach to the challenges of implementing the UN norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace.

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Events

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Briefing for Parlamentarians on Cybercrime

In recent years, criminal cyber attacks have become one of the greatest security threats, with potentially enormous economic as well as dramatic socio-political consequences. In order to contain these risks, UN diplomats are negotiating a global convention against cybercrime.

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Workshop on Government Vulnerabilities Disclosure

ICS conducted a workshop in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office on the cyber security aspect of the German National Security Strategy as part of the dialogue processes.

The hybrid event centred on four thematic blocks: security trends and constellations; tasks, goals, and instruments; civil society and business partnerships; as well as regional and international cooperation.

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Workshop on the Cybersecurity Chapter of the German National Security Strategy

ICS conducted a workshop in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office on the cyber security aspect of the German National Security Strategy as part of the dialogue processes.
The hybrid event centred on four thematic blocks: security trends and constellations; tasks, goals, and instruments; civil society and business partnerships; as well as regional and international cooperation.

Read more -->