The National Cybersecurity Strategies (NCS) of countries in the Asia and Pacific region were reviewed to investigate the extent to which they foreground and mainstream whole-of-society cyber resilience in the strategies.

The review investigated:

• The involvement of civil society stakeholders in the development of cybersecurity strategies.
• The extent to which resilience is incorporated into the national cybersecurity strategies.
• The extent to which whole-of-society cyber resilience perspectives are adopted in the strategies.
• The roles, responsibilities, and modalities of participation ascribe to the civil society stakeholders (i.e., individual citizens, communities, and third-sector organizations) in the strategies.

Fourteen countries were selected for the review, representing a wide variety in terms of commitment to cybersecurity (i.e., Global Cybersecurity Index), cybersecurity maturity (i.e., based on Australian Strategic Policy Institute index), and overall level of development (i.e., Human Development Index).

Overall, we found that:

• Several countries include resilience thinking in their national cybersecurity strategies,
• however, few countries give elaborate framing and operationalization of cyber resilience.
• All countries acknowledge cybersecurity as shared duty of all stakeholders,
• however, there are limited avenues for citizen co-production of cybersecurity.
• Citizens are largely framed as recipients of cybersecurity,
• and there remains better engagement around cybersecurity between specific sectors, for example, between the government and the private sector.

The findings from the review are detailed in the outputs below.

RELEVANT OUTPUTS / FEATURES

Christine, D. (2021). Improving cybersecurity means understanding how cyberattacks affect both governments and civilians, The Conversation, 20 July 2021

Thinyane, M. & Christine, D. (2020), Co-production of Cyber Resilience in Asia and the Pacific: Abridged Preliminary Report, United Nations University Institute in Macau.

Christine, D. & Thinyane, M. (2020), Comparative Analysis of Cyber Resilience Strategies in Asia-Pacific Countries, The 5th IEEE Cyber Science and Technology Conference (CyberSciTech2020)

Christine, D. & Thinyane, M. (2020), Cyber Resilience in Asia Pacific – A Review of National Cybersecurity Strategies, United Nations University Institute in Macau.

ENGAGEMENTS

Thinyane, M & Christine, D (2020). Invited Panelist “Smart Citizen Cyber Resilience in Asia and Pacific”, Building Digital Resilience for COVID-19 Response and Recovery webinar series by IEEE Standards Association and eWorldwide Group, 14th – 16th April 2020