Council of Europe Octopus Conference- Some Thoughts

l am still sitting in the parliament room of the Council of Europe at the celebration event for the Budapest Convention. It was another very good event advancing the challenges fighting Cybercrime. Let me try to summarize a few thoughts:

• The Budapest Convention is probably the best convention out there allowing a wide adoption of a harmonized legislation to fight Cybercrime internationally.
• A lot of countries outside the Council adopted or are in the process adopting the convention
• It balances the fight against criminals with the protection of Privacy and Human Rights.
• The willingness and the activities to collaborate internationally increase
• The idea of the Cybersecurity Agenda as a mechanism to land and integrate Cybercrime and Cyberscurity resonated extremely well

A lot of good signs. There are some caveats however:

• There are countries rejecting adoption mainly because Council of Europe does not have a global mandate or because it is called Budapest Convention. I guess the criminals like this approach
• The economical challenges esp. in Europe decreases the amount of money available for this. The call then was, that the private sector has to do more. We are committed continuing supporting these activities but typically if governments are financially challenged- well they are our customers as well
• Where is the private sector? I just meet a few companies at these events: Some security vendors, some credit cad companies and us. Where are the others? Where is Google? Where is Apple? What about IBM? Amazon? The big Telcos? Why do they not participate in addressing crime and helping governments to get better and carry the burden? Do they not care?

Roger

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