What cybersecurity means for global trade

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/09/what-cybersecurity-means-for-global-trade/

By James Lockett
Sep 15 2015

Cybersecurity is a sensitive and important issue, but it is also one that 
is open to inappropriate use by policy makers who choose to use it to 
inhibit free trade in ICT (Information and Communications Technology). 
Ironically, the internet and ICT may offer more benefits to the 
development of global trade than any single policy has managed to achieve.

Cybersecurity does not fall neatly into a single set of rules. Rather, it 
spans espionage and theft, privacy and data protection, cross-border trade 
and investment in ICT, and cross-border criminal enforcement. Because of 
this, it can be open to restrictive trade measures defined as ensuring 
national self-sufficiency to protect national security. When implemented 
for the wrong reasons, such policy making does little more than create the 
illusion of national security, and will tend to inhibit the vital flow of 
ICT products and services needed in order for countries and societies to 
leverage the advantages of the Digital Age and Digital Economy.

When originally established, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 
(GATT) was intended to deal with the very technical issue of regulating 
trade between signatory countries. Other multilateral institutions created 
at the time in order to enhance international cooperation, most notably 
the United Nations, were created to address issues of national or 
international security and peace. The GATT was drafted in such a way so as 
not to unduly constrain signatories’ freedom of action in matters of 
national security, and this policy space has resulted in ambiguities that 
can be exploited in ways that are unhelpful.

For example, in 2010 a group of United States senators called for the 
private sale of telecommunications equipment from a Chinese company to a 
major US carrier to be blocked on the grounds that the carrier was also a 
supplier to the military. In a 2012 report, citing cybersecurity concerns, 
the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence recommended that 
US telecommunications operators not do business with China’s leading 
network equipment suppliers, and that the government should block 
takeovers of US companies by the largest Chinese equipment manufacturers.

[...]

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