Toft Attends Cyber Security Conference

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Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, attended this year’s Global Conference on Cyber Space at The Hague, The Netherlands.

He attended by special invitation from the Netherlands Foreign Ministry as a representative of the Pardee School and the Oxford Martin School’s Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC), where Professor Toft is co-Chair of Dimension 1 (national cyber strategy and policy).

“The weather was brilliant, and this year’s conference—perhaps reflecting the increased importance of cyber security we saw at this year’s World Economic Forum (Davos) in late January—was attended by many more high-level delegates than Seoul in 2013,” Arreguín-Toft said. “As a delegate, my role was to share progress on GCSCC’s cyber capacity maturity model with other delegates.”

The conference advanced as a series of meetings and panels; each engaging two core themes: cooperation (transnational and public-private), and practical results (resulting in the announcement by Netherlands Foreign Minister Bert Koenders of the GFCE or Global Forum for Cyber Expertise—a new organization with 42 member states intended to share expertise on cyber security both among themselves, but with the developing world).

The next meeting is scheduled to take place in Mexico in 2017.

Arreguin-Toft’s current research focuses on the utility of barbarism—the systematic or deliberate harm of noncombatants in pursuit of a military objective—as a strategy in war. Learn more about him here.