Cybersecurity Policy & Emerging Threats

Cybersecurity policy has become an integral part of national and international politics. Amongst other elements, cybersecurity policy includes establishing institutions, the allocation and distribution of resources, processes and legal frameworks, as well as the influence that national policies have on international relations (“spillover effects”). Even if many of these challenges have to be addressed primarily at the national level, it is crucial to learn from each other internationally in order to develop common solutions and to disseminate these solutions.

The programme "Cybersecurity Policy & Emerging Threats" consists of four areas:

●      German Cybersecurity Policy

●      Transatlantic Cyber Forum

●      European Cybersecurity Policy

●      Cyberdiplomacy and Cyber Foreign Policy

The programme is currently supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the German Foundation for Peace Research.

The team is regularly interviewed by German- (amongst others Tagesthemen), American- (for example the Washington Post and New York Times) and European media (amongst others EURACTIV) and presents its work at national and international events. It was previously invited to hold presentations at the G7-Ministers-Meeting, the German Bundestag, the Cybersecurity Caucus of the American Congress and the European Parliament.

German Cybersecurity Policy

In terms of German cybersecurity policy, Interface pursues the goal of supporting politicians in pursuing empirically based, better policies. For this purpose, it provides various types of analyses and handouts, such as a mapping of German cybersecurity actors and policy analyses. Furthermore, Interface contributes to the enhancement of expertise in various target groups, including government employees, students and journalists and the exchange of knowledge between experts of the cybersecurity policy community. In addition, Interface takes an active role in public debates in order to set thematic priorities and to introduce new ideas to the media discourse.

Transatlantic Cybersecurity Policy

In January 2017, Interface founded the "Transatlantic Cyber ​​Forum" (TCF). The TCF is an intersectoral, transatlantic cybersecurity expert network with 150 members from civil society, academia, industry, and governments. The TCF constitutes working groups on current issues of transatlantic cybersecurity policy, which aim to develop concrete policy recommendations within a time frame of eleven months.

Please find more information on current working groups and the TCF here.

European Cybersecurity Policy

Interface covers, among other issues, EU cyber diplomacy, the EU cyber security architecture and current topic-specific legislation in the field of IT security. Interface maps relevant EU legislation, policies and actors in the field of EU cybersecurity policy and analyzes how their effective implementation and application can be facilitated. From 2018-2021, Interface implemented the EU-funded project EU Cyber ​​Direct together with the European Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) and the German Marshall Fund (GMF). Interface has been represented on the Advisory Board of the successor project since 2021. Interface is also part of the ENISA Ad-Hoc working group on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and also sits on the Advisory Committee of the SPARTA project.

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, interface’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 nexus between cyber capacity-building activities and norms implementation. Previously, the project analyzed the role of governments in coordinated vulnerability disclosure at both national and international levels, as well as the steps governments can take to ensure the security of software supply chains. 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.

The project “Cyber Confidence-Building Measures: The Scope and Success Factors of Practical Implementation” focuses on Cyber Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs). Even though CBMs are one of the main instruments of multilateral cooperation within cyber diplomacy it remains understudied. Thus, this project aims to map regional development and applications of CBMs and identify success factors and challenges for implementing them. This project is funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF).

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).

Please find more information on this section here.

The team is always available for national and international media inquiries  as well as lectures and presentations.

We generally reject invitations to "manels" (all-male panels). Travel and accommodation costs for events to which our team is invited are generally not covered by Interface; we recommend CO2 compensation for flights and do not take domestic flights. While we generally refrain from speaking fees for presentations within the fields of politics, academia and civil society, we require a remuneration or donation to interface for invitations from the private sector.