3.2. Other multilateral forums

🎯 What other major diplomatic and political processes have cybersecurity elements on the agenda?

Diplomatic and political processes that are not focused on cybersecurity increasingly consider cybersecurity aspects as well. 

Cyberespionage appeared on the agenda of the G20, a group of 20 major economies, in 2015, when it agreed ‘that no country should conduct or support ICT-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors’ (G20, 2015, art. 26). The G20 Cybersecurity Dialogue Working Group, as part of the G20 Digital Economy Task Force, is a venue for multistakeholder, cross-sectoral discussion on security in the context of the digital economy, such as exchanging good national practices. In addition, the G20 Osaka Track, initiated in 2019, intensified international rule-making efforts in the digital economy, especially on data flows and e-commerce, while promoting enhanced protections for intellectual property, personal information, and cybersecurity.

Similarly, in the past, the Group of Seven (G7) has reflected on the need for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace and, in particular, on its relevance for intellectual property theft and economic cyberespionage.

The World Trade Organization (WTO), under its plurilateral negotiations on e-commerce, carried out under the Joint Statement Initiative (JSI), promotes cybersecurity as one of the issues on its agenda. Accordingly, discussions about cybersecurity have focused on strengthening national capacities for incident response, encouraging cooperation, and fostering sharing of information (JSI Focus Group D), but have also considered cross-border data flows (Focus Group B) and electronic authentication (Focus Group A).

The Global Forum on Digital Security for Prosperity of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) offers a multilateral and multidisciplinary setting that, since 2018, brings together experts and policymakers to share experiences and good practices on digital security and discuss the economic and social aspects of cybersecurity. In addition, the OECD’s Working Party on Security and Privacy in the Digital Economy (SPDE) brings together stakeholders to shape high-level policy recommendations, such as those related to the security of digital technologies and products.