Konrad Adenauer Foundation hosts specialized forum on cybercrime at regional level - Regional Programme Alliances for Development and Democracy with Latin America
From April 3 to 5, 2022, the "Security Forum of the Americas: The Criminalization of Cyberspace", organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and its ADELA Regional Program, the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Latin American and Caribbean Parliament (PARLATINO) and the Crime Stoppers Regional Office. The event was attended by more than 30 specialists, ministerial officials from the fields of innovation and digitalization, security and intelligence, and domestic policy, as well as regional parliamentarians whose legislative agenda is committed to advances in the protection of cyberspace.
They spent two days at the PARLATINO headquarters discussing joint strategies and legal frameworks against crimes currently committed in cyberspace. The importance of working on multilateral initiatives with Latin American countries was highlighted, as well as the need to generate a regional legal framework against cybercrime, given that in Latin America alone, five countries are included in the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.
He also addressed the high increase in cybercrime in the last 3 years, which has increased by about 600%, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. This digital criminal world is worth about 10.5 trillion dollars a year globally, with Latin America being one of the most affected regions.
Awareness of cyber threats was raised at the political level, along with the importance of generating regulations and policy initiatives with the effective capacity to protect the population from this type of crime. Finally, it was suggested that an appropriate strategy would be to anticipate these crimes and build a strong resilience in the structures, with methods of defenses that allow a quick recovery from these cyber attacks.
Raising awareness of these issues was another central theme, with the vast majority of stakeholders expressing concern. It is clear that in the face of such diverse, impactful and intimidating threats, end users in all their breadth and variety, are the gateway to higher impact crimes.
"Every year, millions of new users in Latin America and the Caribbean connect to the Internet for the first time," reveals a recent Inter-American Development Bank report. "This, in turn, creates a melting pot of new customers who are not as tech-savvy as the more mature digital customers; which makes for a higher risk environment. For these types of attacks, the Latin America and Caribbean region is not only a target, but also a major source of them," adds the same paper.
You can see everything recorded in the event on our YouTube channels: KAS_ADELA (Forum in Spanish) and ADELA Academy (Forum in English). In the next few days you will be able to know the statement of commitments that helped to clarify all the invited specialists on the subject.
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