While governments worldwide are increasingly seeing the importance of having a national cyber security strategy, many Asian countries’ efforts at developing such strategies appear to lag behind their Western counterparts, due mainly to lack of collaboration between parties involved.
According to a report commissioned by McAfee on levels of cyber-preparedness around the world, some 40 or so cyber-security strategies have been published around the world, with most emerging out of the United States and Europe.
The report quotes Danish public sector security expert Christian Wernberg-Tougaard saying Nordic countries score high on cyber-security due to the countries’ tradition of information sharing and transparency.
In April last year, foreign ministers for Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Finland met to discuss and pledge cooperation on matters of common interest, with cyber security being one of the topics covered.
“Many public and private sector systems are based on trust,” Wernberg-Tougaard said in the report.
Information sharing among Asian governments has, on the other hand, mostly been bi-lateral, says president at Cyber Security Strategies and consultant to McAfee Robert Lentz.
While organizations like NATO and the EU have been fairly effective at facilitating dialogue between its members, Lentz notes Asian countries are not quite as comfortable in such multilateral environments yet, although more collaboration is starting to take place.
Concerns around disruption of key public services will be crucial toward motivating governments’ push for more mature cyber security frameworks, says Lentz, particularly in light of anticipated demand for smartgrids in the region.