Security News > 2020 > January > Attempts to define international infosec rules of the road bogged down by endless talkshops, warn diplomats

International progress on state-level so-called cybersecurity "Norms" is hopelessly bogged down in an explosion of NGOs and internal United Nations rivalries between two overlapping groups, a French security conference heard this week.

Not only are there two overlapping United Nations groups tasked with defining international cybersecurity norms, but even agreed declarations are ignored because nobody notices what the UN comes up with on cybersecurity, diplomats complained.

"Norms," said Alex Klimburg of the Global Commission on the Security of Cyberspace, a think-tank initiative, "Are soft law. They're agreements on the rules of the road in cyberspace."

Speaking about two top-level UN cybersecurity groups - the Group of Governmental Experts and the Open-Ended Working Group - Florian Escudié of the French foreign ministry warned that the two groups were descending into rival talking shops.

He told an audience at the Forum International de Cybersecurité: "The main risk I can see is that we have a cliff between both: one group perceived as the group for the happy and the few, the GGE, with experts convening in a small group, addressing items that have been discussed for a very long time, and unable to come to a solution to those issues."

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https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/31/un_cyber_norms_chaos_fic_2020/