Kazakhstan pitches global cybersecurity pact at UN

Noting "increasingly frequent" attacks by hackers against governments, businesses and other insititutions, Kazakhstan called this week for a global cybersecurity treaty to deter the threat. Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev made the call before the UN General Assembly’s annual general debate at UN headquarters in New York. "(It is worrying that) not a single international convention or multilateral treaty governs information processes," he said. This may be why "most hacker attacks on banks, businesses, government institutions, [the] military and even nuclear facilities have been carried out with impunity," he added. Nazarbayev particularly stressed the need for what he called “an international legal framework of the global information space." Such a legal framework could be based on the nine elements of a global culture of cybersecurity that the General Assembly adopted in 2002. The nine elements are:

• Awareness
• Responsibility
• Response (acting in a timely and cooperative manner)
• Ethics (respecting legitimate interests of others)
• Democracy (security should be consistent with values recognized by democratic societies, including freedom to exchange thoughts and ideas)
• Risk assessment (periodic risk asssessments to identify threats and vulnerabilities)
• Security design and implementation
• Security management
• Reassessment

Meanwhile, the UN said the Kazakh President also underlined the importance of greater dialogue between the Islamic world and the West to counter Islamophobia and promote harmony between peoples of different religions and ethnicities. He also held a bilateral meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, where they discussed the security situation in Central Asia and how to strengthen regional cooperation in such areas as counter-terrorism. Ban commended Kazakhstan for its leadership on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation issues, according to a read-out of the meeting issued by the Secretary-General’s spokesperson, the UN said. — TJD, GMA News