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Global Dialogue Security Summit 2021: Managing Cyberspace in the Indo Pacific

- by GDF & KAS India

The Global Dialogue Forum (GDF) in partnership with the India Office of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) organized the Global Dialogue Security Summit 2021: Managing Cyberspace in the Indo Pacific on November 24-25, 2021, in Shillong, Meghalaya.

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Key Takeaways Cyber Security Conference 24-25 November 2021

​​​​​​​Day-1: Wednesday, 24.11.2021

Inaugural Session

  • ​​​​​​​The international conference kicked off to a characteristically brisk start with Mr. Moses welcoming the delegates and acknowledging the partners. Lt. General Sunil Shrivastava of CENJAWS was effusive in his welcome remarks and Amb. Ruchi Ghanshyam laid down the framework of the topic very succinctly. Mr. Peter Rimmele brought in the role of the KAS, a European and a German perspective while laying out the desirable path for future developments in the Cyber space for democracies.
  • Lt General Rajesh Pant, the National Cyber Security Coordinator, in his keynote address quoted Rabindranath Tagore and contextualized it with the needs in Cyber Space. He brought in the international dimension and gave a heads-up on all the multilateral groups and networks working on the disruptions and challenges posed by the Cyber hackers and crimes thereof while highlighting the 6 trillion US dollars’ loss to the international economy. He emphasized on the vulnerability of Telecom and Power sectors and the necessity of public and private sectors to come together to face the daunting cyber future ahead

Session I: Defining Cyberspace and Identifying its Challenges

  • ​​​​​​​Major General Lav Bikram Chand introduced the cyberspace as a global common and highlighted the latest technological advances in processors, AI, 5G conflict and wide pervasiveness of the cyber in our lives etc. and then invited Vice Admiral Ir Amarulla Octavian of Republic of Indonesia Defense University to elaborate further who brought into a sharp focus the potential of developing new tech in the cyber domain in the Indo-Pacific.
  • Mr. Md Nobir Uddin of the Government of Bangladesh shed more light on the tech, the modus operandi of hackers, cyber criminals and the tackling approach of the Govt. of Bangladesh. Brig. Ashish Chhibbar, who was the last speaker of the session, pointed out that India was the world leader in this field and focused on the AI machines, their functionality and applications, accuracy of solutions of the AI systems as well as the limitations thereof- read dependency on the quality of input data, black box syndrome, weak algorithm etc.
  • A vibrant discussion followed- can AI drive a car in the Indian traffic- affirmative was the answer citing the ‘swarm tech’ in use already in USA. Making decision using Autonomous tech for example in driving- only a supporting or assisting function is in use but progress is being made.

Session II: Collaboration and Conflict over Cyberspace in the Indo-Pacific

  • ​​​​​​​Lt Gen Arun Sahni, the Chair for this session II, began by encapsulating the pre-lunch sessions and built a bridge to the session II, enumerating the challenges faced especially due to the Chinese rogue activities and its electronic war capabilities in the cyber space. He flagged the aspect of multilateral collaborative efforts citing ASEAN as a good example.
  • Mr. Amit Sharma, from the Indian Ministry of Defence but participating in a personal capacity, pointed out that Cyber warfare cannot happen without the involvement of State actors and funding as military grade cyber weapons like ‘stuxnet’, cyber soldiers are extremely expensive. He went on to focus on Snowden’s revelations, the dark web, funding through cryptocurrencies and drugs money as well as stressed on the need for a cohesive approach with integration of all the tiers.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Dr. Geoff Heriot of Australian Institute of International Affairs, who joined on-line, opined that Australia, with a population of 26 million, would be unlikely to be self-sufficient in critical and emerging technologies and was positive about the mini-lateral groupings like QUAD though not AUKUS and was confident that, Australia would be able to make significant contributions in dealing with cyber threats and challenges.
  • Mr. Alok Sinha, CEO of Globus Eight Inc., the last speaker of the session also joined on-line focused on current challenges of Advance Persistent Threat (APT) groups, mostly state sponsored, stemming from softwares being done without adequate safety locks, AI getting cheaper, weaponisation of tech giants through access to their data which has no geo-boundaries. While India was still evolving, six countries were well advanced in this field namely USA, UK, China, Russia North Korea, Israel.
  • The discussion that followed was about cyberwar obviating the need for physical war unless territorial questions are involved, sovereignty in cyberspace, future hybrid wars and the Gerasimov doctrine and such other burning questions.

Session III: Cyberspace in Industrial Development

  • ​​​​​​​Amb. AR Ghanshyam, the Chair of this session, began by evolution of machine tech, related data and connected it to the current context of cyber space and industrial development. The first speaker, Prof. Dr. Heribert Dieter, pointed out the increased entanglement of geo-economics in geo-politics and geostrategic issues. Divergent policies about data-ownership, the ethicality of facial-recognition tech, the increased use of robots in manufacturing in China due to a declining and aging workforce, the economic non-viability of cyberspace faced production if the costs are too high- will not apply in India as there is ample availability of labour, deep interventions by the Chinese government in the manufacturing thus forcing the world to think in terms of China+1 as far as supply chains go and rising autarky in China were starkly brought out by Prof. Dieter. He also remarked upon the AUKUS being much more than just a submarine deal before expounding on negative economic effects of targeting satellites in space.
  • The next speaker Mr. Ravi Nirgudkar tersely informed that cyber security in industries was not a luxury but a necessity and a cyber-security plan needs to have all three dimensions- defensive, recovery in case of attacks and offensive with cyber forensics playing an important role. Mr. Argha Bose of Tata Advance Systems Ltd shed light on key aspects of Industry 4.0 like enabling technologies of IoT, AI, Cloud, Block chain, Augmented Reality, small factories etc. He also highlighted the criticality of cyber security to industrial development because of the interconnectedness of manufacturing processes on line and generation of huge amount of data and ended with an outline of the cyber threat landscape of challenges and threats as well that of a proactive Defence approach to deal with them.
  • A vibrant discussion followed amongst the audience and speakers with even the effect of pandemic on costs of production coming into debate as also the greening of industrial production in light of the recently concluded COP 26 in Glasgow.

Day-2: Thursday, 25.11.2021

Session IV: Conventional War, Cyberspace and Sovereignty

  • ​​​​​​​Lt. General Sunil Srivastava, the chair of the session, enunciated that the current scenario is no more that of a binary relationship of war or peace with the states indicating the pivotal role of both state and non-state actors. Cyber-attacks require great sophistication and deterrence by denial calls for strong cyber defence, he added. He further elucidated on the need to examine the lack of consensus as to how international law can apply to cyber space and opened the session with the question if cyber diplomacy is the only way forward. He stated that if we have to prevent cyber domain to become a lawless domain, the time is now!
  • Mr. K.P.M. Das in his presentation mentioned that the cyber does not consider tangible threats but aims for the minds of the population, impacting the psychological order. He defined Cyber-state as a state entirely dependent on cyberspace for political, economic and defence factors that is an aspiration for many states. He enunciated that the international norms do not apply to cyberspace and hence, there is a need of a doctrine that defines a clearer set of laws.
  • Whilst mentioning the significant episodes of cyber wars, Mr. George Mikaberidze spoke about the Digital Sovereignty as well as Digital Colonialization. He listed the factors contributing to the blurring and loss of country’s digital sovereignty, like: Loss of Control over Infrastructure, the possibility of economic and political pressure as well as degradation of their own intellectual resources.
  • Mr. Shreyas Jayasimha, whilst specifying the cryptocurrency and response to cybersecurity brought in the aspect of “Global Commons” and mentioned that the realm of cyber space is not new but what we need is clarity. He further highlighted that India can play leverage on the strategic advantage on global stage.
  • This was followed by a discussion as to what sovereignty means for India. The concept of whitelisting was brought in by Mr. K.P.M. Das that entails checking the trusted sources with regard to transparency and the trusted products.  Mr. Shreyas Jayasimha mentioned that aspects of sovereignty are being followed by India but we do need an integrated approach connecting Telecom, crypto, AI and cyber. Mr. George Mikaberidze further suggested that if you want a trusted hardware, it should be produced locally and India does have the potential for it.

Session V: Cyberspace Connectivity for Peace and Development in India’s Northeast

  • ​​​​​​​The Chair, Mr. KJ Alphons, MP brought to fore the various initiatives efforts of the Government of India for the development of India while using the cyber tech to bring transparency and eliminate corruption in the digital delivery of the Government schemes like JAM trinity, MNREGA, Unified payment system as also incentivizing the MSMEs sector with various initiatives both pre and post pandemic with many more initiatives in the planning stage.Dr. Pfokrelo Kapesa stressed on the need for cyber connectivity for the northeast region and warned of manipulation of big data and apps to create unsavory situations in the region. So, she opined that a comprehensive digital regulatory authority needed to harness the digital power of the cyber world.
  • Mr. Mutchu Mithi, an MLA from Arunachal Pradesh began by injecting humor into the proceedings while taking a swipe on lack of privacy or surveillance tech. He further said that cyber space represented new possibilities and new opportunities and an example was that there used to be a lot of discrimination in northeast but that has subsided after internet has touched our lives in northeast. Cyber space can be misused but being new dimensions, more conversations need to take place to resolve these negative issues in light of the positive effects.
  • Lt General Arun Sahni appreciated effusively the positive developmental and connectivity changes that have taken place under the leadership of Mr. Conrad Sangma and agreed with Mr. Mithi that cyber space was a doorway to opportunities with accompanying security challenges.
  • Mr. Peter Rimmele of KAS-India touched upon the study done with FICCI on the topic ‘Attracting Investments in the seven sister states’ as also on both, the opportunities and the challenges emanating from the cyber world.
  • The honourable CM of Meghalaya, Mr. Conrad Sangma after congratulating the organisers and inviting the audience to be part of the Cherry blossom festival, moved on to his own life journey and how he started an ISP business in Meghalaya already in the 90s but which failed because of a lack of digital infrastructure but now it was flourishing. Some of the key points that he articulated were 1. Prolific usage of tech in governance has helped in decision making through e-governance tools and framing of policies-monitoring roads, maternity fatalities were two cases to the point. 2. Cyberattacks on power grids and such vulnerable sectors as well as fake news were an ever present danger and internet’s role in law and order situations was a major concern. The entire dynamics of warfare were changing due to the cyber dimension. 3. Socio-economic dimensions needed to go hand in hand to have peace in the region and thanks to the cyber space, opportunities would abound as will the challenges. 4. The state government was working on expanding the digital infrastructure. Lastly, he would take the recommendations of this conference as a serious policy making tool.

Session VI: Cyberspace and Neighbourhood Threats

  • ​​​​​​​Amb. Ruchi Ghanshyam chaired the session and spoke at length on the various dimensions of cyberspace and cited the study of the Harvard Kennedy Centre to drive home the point of relevance of neighborhood and the issues thereof.
  • Retired Lt. Col. Ofer Rothberg of Elbit Systems from Israel and an expert on cyber shields for weapon systems, as the name suggest, expounded on civil and defense critical assets including financial services, cyber infrastructure etc. with practical examples like the Hacking of UK Trident and was insistent about sensitizing the policy makers to the need of the protective tools for all kinds of infrastructure and the process involved therein.
  • Dr. Adam Svendsen from the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies focused on what factors to consider when structuring the CYBINT, the system to system (SOS) approach, the attribute variables involved, the Analysis and Engineering levels and the usefulness of neighborhood
  • evaluation case studies with situational awareness being the overall key to handling cyber threats.
  • Dr. Gudrun Wacker of the SWP, a German think tank of the Chancellory, focused on China’s grey zone activities which include cyber activities vis-à-vis Taiwan which were incremental in nature. The range of Chinese activities include 5 million cyberattacks per day, targeted disinformation in social media, economic coercion by stopping Chinese tourists from going to Taiwan, boycott of Taiwanese pineapples, incursions by PLA Air Force, military activities in the South China Sea and scholarship for Taiwanese students to study in China as a long term tool for making next generations more pliant. So there was an urgent need to make societies more resilient to deal with the Chinese aggression and strategy of winning wars without fighting.
  • The discussions that followed had elements like possibilities of international recognition of Taiwan by countries like from Europe, the US which ran the risk of upsetting China and starting the III WW, another element was fragmentation of cyberspace due to geography having come into cyberspace and the concept of it being a global common coming into danger.

Valedictory Session on Cyberspace war- Protecting and Defending India

  • ​​​​​​​Mr. Navin Kumar Singh, the Director General of National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) spoke in his private capacity in the Valedictory session and began with the quote that the next wars will not be fought on land air or water but in cyber space!! And that one had to be ready against cyberattacks on critical assets, manipulation of networks dependent on internet and stealing of data as well as research and development work being done indigenously. Some key points that he lighted were:
  1. NCIIPC worked in closed coordination with defence cyber agencies.
  2. Threat monitoring by Cyber analytics centre.
  3. Seven critical sectors focused upon are Banking, telecom, energy, government, health, defence and public safety.
  4. Proactive and risk based approach with mitigation strategies was advised.
  5. Designated federal cybercrime agency and a Cyber Security Act were needed.
  6. A continuous evaluation, monitoring adversaries, adaptation to newer tech and the strategy of offence being the best form of defence were advocated.

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