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30 May 2016

Mapping Cybersecurity – A visual overview of relevant global spaces in 2015

As part of its efforts to facilitate greater stakeholder engagement in cybersecurity debates, the Freedom Online Coalition Working Group ‘An Internet Free and Secure’ launched a visual mapping of cybersecurity processes and spaces. The mapping aims to provide an easy to use tool for civil society to track relevant cybersecurity debates and more easily engage in these discussions.

The mapping was developed by Working Group members, led by Vladimir Radunovic from DiploFoundation and supported by GPD staff. It was produced with support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and formally presented at the Global Conference on Cyberspace 2015 and the Freedom Online Conference in Mongolia.

To access the pdf version of the mapping click here

The four page leaflet maps events according to five process tracks (United Nations and subsidiary bodies; IGF and related processes; Governmental and intergovernmental processes; Technical and standard-setting bodies; and other processes). Each event is also tagged by several attributes:

  • Level of inclusiveness: to indicate whether an event is closed (by invitation only or for “members of the club”), open for anyone, or conditionally open (e.g. anyone can apply, but there is a limited number of places available so selection of some sort takes place).
  • Thematic coverage: to indicate the main thematic focus of the event, in particular whether it deals with cybercrime (including child safety or spam), network security and critical resources (including incident-handling), international peace and security (including arms control, cyber defence and cyber-warfare, international humanitarian law, confidence building measures, disarmament), or digital rights (including privacy and online freedoms); events covering more than one theme were given a “multiple topics” attribute.
  • Functional mechanism: to indicate whether the function of the event is to make decisions (either at the event or within the broader related) or to discuss (where no direct decisions come from the discussion or the process).

The visual design of the cybersecurity map was based on the Internet governance mapping ‘visualizing the playingfield’ , which was developed by Lea Kaspar, Deborah Brown and Joana Varon in 2013.