Today’s headlines regularly feature the word ‘cyber’, reporting on threats such as online fraud, ransomware, data theft, botnets and denial-of-service attacks on corporate and government servers, cyberespionage, and cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure including hospitals and power supply networks. These incidents raise pressing questions about the risks in cyberspace, the evolution of technologies (including AI), and growing geopolitical tensions.
What are the real cybersecurity threats and risks? How do they affect development, human rights, and international peace? What are the major policy and regulatory challenges? What roles do national frameworks, diplomacy, international law, and regional and multistakeholder cooperation play in addressing these threats, and how effective are they?
This online course covers technological and geopolitical risks, policy frameworks, actors, and initiatives related to cybersecurity and cybercrime. Over four modules, it looks at cybersecurity risks; national policy frameworks, including strategies, laws, and CERTs/CSIRTs; combating cybercrime, including the UN Convention against Cybercrime and the Budapest Convention; and cybersecurity and international peace, including the UN framework for responsible state behaviour, the new UN Global Mechanism, and multistakeholder processes such as the Geneva Dialogue. It also covers a broader context: the relations of cybersecurity with economic development and human rights.