Bangladesh has moved up by 25 places from its previous year's rank in the latest edition of the Global Cybersecurity Index, maintained by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Scoring an impressive 81.27 in the index for 2020, Bangladesh is sitting pretty at 53rd, in a list containing 194 countries from across the globe. “Bangladesh ranked 11th in the Asia Pacific region”.

The index is based on weighted scores for legal system, technical skills, organizational system, capacity building and mutual cooperation. It is published on ITU’s website. Earlier, Bangladesh was ranked 78th in this index.

Scoring 100, the USA was at the highest position on the index. That may come as a surprise given the numerous high profile hacks of American cybersecurity infrastructure that have come to light in recent months, including to interrupt the supply of critical utilities. The UK and Saudi Arabia were in second position with a score of 99.54 and Estonia is in third with a score of 99.48.

Bangladesh ranked 11th in the Asia Pacific region where Korea ranked the first scoring 97.52. India was in the fourth position, China in seventh and Pakistan in 14th.

"This is a reflection of Bangladesh's continued ability to provide cyber security, which will encourage us to fight cyber attacks more efficiently in the future," said Tariq M Barkatullah, project director at BGD e-GOV CIRT, that works with the government on the country’s cyber security.

Cyber Behavior for Digital Bangladesh

Preamble Bangladesh sets its vision for “Digital Bangladesh” in 2009. Bangladesh based on four pillars named: Digital Government, Human Resource Development, IT Industry Promotion and Connecting Citizen. With this vision, Bangladesh already developed strategies, acts, policies, procedures for governance towards Digital Bangladesh Bangladesh. Moreover, emphasizes on cooperation in cyberspace security by guidelines for strengthening ties with global bodies and organization. United Nation formulates two groups to develop norms, rules and responsible state behavior. These norms intended to all UN member states and Bangladesh will move in preparing towards adopting and practicing.

Objective In 2018 United Nation (UN) general assembly (GA), member states urged to Digital formulate some consensus for responsible state behavior for securing use of information technology, so malicious and abuse of this evolving technology can undermine the UN mission. The growing need of ICT in critical infrastructure, the people’s service dependency upon ICT and some country developing military capacity in ICT, there is growing concern that, ICT will be utilized for military purposes, terrorist group, state or non-state actor can utilize this ultimate ICT revolution to destabilize any country’s critical information infrastructure (CII). So in 28th May 2021, GGE published its advance copy of consensus report consisting of 11 norms, rules and principles, that are voluntary, non binding, but responsible state should deploy as guiding principles.

What is GGE? Since 1998, in UN agenda, information security issues incorporated, as Russian Federation first discussed a drafted note on information security in the UN GA First Committee. Then in 2004, five GGE studied ICT threats in international security context and the identified threats counter and mitigation process. In 2018, UN general assembly (GA) resolution 73/266, secretary general formed two processes to discuss information security issues and formulate responsible state behavior. One, a Group of Governmental Expert (GGE) and another Open-ended Working Group (OEWG). This was on a request from GA participants to ensure in context for ICT security and risk on internal peace, security, stability and human rights. The GGE working team focused on the below topics:

1. The ICT existing and upcoming threats.
2. How to apply existing international law in ICT use and building framework.
3. Norms, Principles and Rules for responsible states behavior.
4. Measures for Confidence-building.
5. Capacity building

Existing and Potential Threats World is being increasingly digitalized using ICT and being connected. ICT brings enormous blessings and opportunities for nations around the globe. But GGE noted in previous report that, severe persistent threats identified in ICT including ICT’s malicious use by States and non-State actors. Moreover, attacks in ICT have excelled in scale, scope, sophistication and severity. ICT threats appears may differently in regions, but their impacts can be global. GGE also reported that, some states enhancing their ICT capabilities in military purposes, that might be utilized in conflicts between states. In addition, malicious activities of ICT by state and non-state actors poses significant risks for national and international peace, stability, safety and security. State actors may use ICT enabled covert information campaign against another 5 Jun 2021 country which impacts process and stability of that country.

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