Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is an important element in every organization, including government entities that use Information Technology (IT) to provide public services. Also, no organization is sufficiently equipped enough to be independent in securing all its networks and IT. It is a collaborative process that involves sharing information and techniques with other organizations with similar cybersecurity goals. Similarly, nations should collaborate to address their cybersecurity issues. Wealthy and developed countries need to work together to improve cybersecurity. Wealthy countries have the resources, such as technology, to use in new cybersecurity strategies. These resources can be shared to protect education, economic growth, and information across all countries, including developing nations.
In addition, developing nations need to have their own cybersecurity workforce and systems. The reasons why it is important for the countries to have a cybersecurity workforce include:
Critical Infrastructures: The developing countries need to protect their critical infrastructures to enhance their development. The infrastructures that use IT are targeted by hackers (Fidler, 2018). Therefore, the countries need comprehensive cyber protection mechanisms that can only be provided by the cybersecurity workforce.
To Protect Critical Data: The countries have information that must be protected from potential breaches. They include digital services and citizens’ personal information. The cybersecurity workforce identifies vulnerabilities and protects them using the latest and safe technologies.
To enhance social and economic growth: Countries depend on cyber-strength to enhance their business and social existence. For example, the public needs to trust business organizations with their privacy and confidentiality (Kabanda, Tanner, & Kent, 2018). A business that deals with consumers’ sensitive data should show that they are able to protect their customers’ sensitive information by having a competent cybersecurity workforce.
Risks to Wealthy Nations
Besides cooperating with the developing countries to improve cybersecurity, wealthy nations could put their cyber systems at risk if they do not help their counterparts through education and cyber workforce training. The threats can be avoided if the wealthy nations help the developing countries to form a cybersecurity workforce to protect their networks and systems. Cyber-threats that the developing countries face could directly or indirectly affect the developed countries (Chernenko, Demidov, & Lukyanov, 2018). First, nations interact with one another through international trade. With the increased use of IT to complete business deals, hackers can target vulnerable networks used by any of the trading partners. The threat would be faced by all the nations involved. If the developing country has a vulnerable network that can aid the hacking attempt, the developed country involved in the trade would also be exposed. Therefore, it is important for the wealthy nation involved to help the developing country to reduce the threats.
A country with a less-educated workforce can harbor cybercriminals for a long time without detecting them. To a developed country, this is a cybersecurity risk because the criminals will patiently wait for the right opportunity to attack. The opportunity could be any dealing between the two countries that involve sharing sensitive information (Fidler, 2018). Thirdly, cybersecurity is global, meaning that an attack on one nation affects the other in some way. Developed countries cannot defeat cyber-insecurity if they do not train and educate the developing countries’ workforce.
Roles of NGOs
NGOs can participate in promoting cybersecurity incident response in several ways. First, they can participate in establishing and recommending cybersecurity standards and procedures to use during incident response (Tanczer, Brass, & Carr, 2018). The NGOs can also recruit and train their workforce to enhance the organization-based response and to share information with other organizations.