New America Contributing to OSCE Cyber Confidence Building Measures

Vienna, Austria - Tim Maurer, Director of the Global Cybersecurity Norms and Resilience Project and Head of Research of New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative, is at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, Austria this week to speak at the July 21 External Stakeholders meeting of the Informal Working Group focusing on developing cyber confidence-building measures.

Mr. Maurer was invited to present New America’s Global Cyber Definitions Database. This searchable website is a public and easily accessible online repository housing over 900 cyber and information security related definitions from around the world. The database continues to be expanded and includes definitions from international organizations, standard setting bodies, states, and other sources such as the Oxford Dictionary on Computing.

In December 2013, the OSCE member states adopted initial confidence-building measures (CBMs) in order to mitigate the risk of information and communication technology enabled conflict. In the summer of 2014, New America received funding from the Swiss government in its capacity as chair of the OSCE to develop a “Compilation of Existing Cybersecurity and Information Security Related Definitions.” This report was published in October 2014, presented to Swiss officials in Bern, and part of the showcase event hosted by the Swiss OSCE Chairmanship in Vienna on November 7, 2014. The report became the basis for the web-based Global Cyber Definitions Database.