Cyber Diplomacy and Cyber Foreign Policy

With societies increasingly digitizing, cybersecurity becomes a focal point of their foreign and security policy. Since the challenges and threats in this field are global and constantly growing, international dialogue is more important than ever. However, current cyber diplomacy efforts are mostly in a stalemate. Despite efforts, at the level of the United Nations (UN), for example, to advance cooperation or at least coordinate on cybersecurity issues, progress is minimal. Increasingly, cyber diplomacy fails to deliver in the face of pressing problems. Therefore, SNV’s Cybersecurity Policy and Resilience Team addresses the question of what an effective and forward-looking cyber diplomacy could look like. 

By cyber diplomacy, we mean international dialogue, coordination, and cooperation with the goal of solving cybersecurity policy problems. International organizations like the UN and formats such as the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) play a significant role. At the same time, it is also crucial to include non-state actors – from the private sector, academia, and civil society – in so-called multi-stakeholder formats, as is done, for instance, in initiatives such as the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace. While the term cyber diplomacy refers to an international perspective – encompassing all actors dealing with cyber security problems at the international level – the concept of cyber foreign policy relates to the international activities of individual states. The European Union (EU) plays a special role in Germany’s cyber foreign policy. 

The project “Pathways to Implementation – From Cyber Diplomacy Commitments To National Policies” is dedicated to developing concrete proposals on how cyber diplomacy commitments like the eleven UN cyber norms can be translated into national policies. Currently, this project focuses on the role of governments in responsible/coordinated disclosure of vulnerabilities at the national and international level. Over the course of this project, we also follow developments around the UN Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on cybersecurity. This project is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. 

As part of the project “The Cyber Normative Power of the Factual – Cyber Diplomacy and State Practice”, we investigated how states – through their actions – shape normative ideas about the use of information and communication technologies by states. In particular, we analyzed how states publicly attribute cyber operations to their perpetrators to find out which normative ideas these state practices express and are meant to disseminate. The project was funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF) in conjunction with a grant from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).