(GIST OF YOJANA) Building Safety, Security, Resilience, and Trust in the Digital Economy

(NOVEMBER-2023)

Building Safety, Security, Resilience, and Trust in the Digital Economy

India’s G20 Presidency has set the agenda for Digital Transformation – DPI, Cyber Security & Digital Skilling. This approach to digital transformation will truly help realise the goal of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – One Earth, One Family, One Future – digitally bringing the world together.

Digital economy Working Group

The Digital economy Working group had extensive discussions on the three key pillars: Digital Public infrastructure, security in the Digital economy, and Digital skilling. After extensive negotiations in Lucknow, Hyderabad, Pune, and Bengaluru, the Ministerial Meeting adopted the ‘outcome’ document, which was unanimously agreed to by all members except for the geopolitical issues that had no direct correlation with digital economy, and the issue was finally resolved at the G20 Delhi summit in September 2023–a stupendous effort by the Indian G20 negotiating team. the Digital economy outcome Document3outlines the details of the consensus that emerged on the key issues.

Digital Public infrastructure (DPI)

One key achievement of the G20 was to come up with a definition of DPIs: Digital Public infrastructure is described as a set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable, can be built on open standards and specifications to deliver and provide equitable access to public and/or private services at a societal scale, and are governed by applicable legal frameworks and enabling rules to drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. DPI was seen as a promising approach to digital transformation by providing a shared technology infrastructure that can be built and leveraged by both the public and private sectors. it was also agreed upon that governance frameworks and institutional capabilities play a very important role in ensuring that DPI is safe, secure, trusted, accountable, and inclusive and can contribute immensely to achieving the sustainable Development goals (SDGs).

Security in the digital economy

Building safety, security, resilience and trust in the digital economy has emerged as one of the key priorities of all G20 members that can ensure an enabling, inclusive, open, fair, non-discriminatory, and secure digital economy. this is essential for continuing the momentum in the growth of the digital economy while ensuring that the key principles of promoting safety, trust, reliability, resilience, and protecting privacy and data remain a top priority and key focus area. trust and security as an essential prerequisite for harnessing the potential of the digital economy have been on top of the agenda right from the 2017 German G20 Presidency, and these values have been reiterated in 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Argentine, Japanese, and Saudi Arabian G20 Presidencies, respectively. The 2020 Saudi Arabian Presidency and the 2021 Italian Presidency recognised that security in the digital economy is a key enabling factor for sustainable development and growth.
The G20 High-Level Principles to support Businesses in Building safety, security, resilience, and trust in the Digital economy can be summarised as under:

1. Security and trust

A human-centric culture of security and trust in the digital economy that enables citizens and businesses to understand risk management can be developed by

Promoting cyber hygiene and the development of market-led and industry-led standards based on the principles of openness, transparency, and consensus.
encouraging businesses and supporting MSMEs to develop and implement good practices and risk management frameworks to maintain the integrity of global supply chains.
Promoting a ‘security by design’ and phased risk management approach along with encryption measures for digital solutions and services, including emerging technologies and connected systems and their devices.
Promoting resilience in connected sectors such as health, finance, manufacturing, and public services and utilities by taking suitable security measures.
encouraging accessible and efficient grievance redressal mechanisms for businesses, MSMEs, and consumers that fall victim to malicious use of digital technologies.

2. capacity building

Capacity building is an important aspect of advancing security across the multi-layered structure of the digital economy and should include

collaborating with and encouraging relevant stakeholders, including international organisations, to prioritise and contribute to capacity building within their areas of expertise.
exploring an interdisciplinary approach that includes strategy, governance, technology, regulatory and non-regulatory frameworks, culture, economics, incident response, and crisis management.
Providing guidance and awareness to citizens, businesses including MSMEs, and the wider economy on how to stay safe and secure online in an inclusive and accessible manner.
Promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all users of digital technologies.
encouraging young people especially women and girls to consider a career in security of digital solutions and services through curricular or extracurricular programmes.

3. research and development

Advancing research and development enables building resilience by

Promoting research in advanced and emerging technologies that can enhance protection against security threats.
sharing best practices on how to tackle various security threats, including recommendations from international organisations.
Facilitating research projects on topics such as the economic costs of security incidents and their impact on businesses and underrepresented communities.
Promoting studies to measure security-related digital divides and its impact on economies.

4. multistakeholder cooperation

Partnering with businesses, civil society organisations, academia, international organisations and the technical community is key to promoting security in the digital economy and this can be reinforced by

Developing opportunities for public-private partnership collaboration and engagement.
Supporting the sharing of trends on known and existing vulnerabilities faced by nongovernmental stakeholders in the digital environment.
Facilitating engagement between businesses and points of contact across various industry incident response teams.

5. strengthening resilience of essential services

Prevention of damage or disruption to certain essential social and economic services in the digital economy is important, and it is essential that stakeholders are encouraged to

take suitable measures to protect services essential to the digital economy from security threats.
encourage businesses to set up mechanisms to assess the security of their supply chains for essential services in an evidence-based approach.

6. support for msmes in the security ecosystem

MSMEs have a very important role to play in the digital economy and the MSME security ecosystem can be strengthened by

Driving innovation by supporting MSMEs that offer security solutions and services to scale up and grow.
Providing guidance and support to MSMEs on how to operate securely in a digital environment.
creating opportunities for MSMEs to engage with governments, shape policy approaches, and share good practices to improve resilience to combat particular security challenges.
seeking to mobilise additional cooperation, funding, and support for MSMEs to improve their security capacity.

Conclusion:

This approach adopted by the G20 member countries under India’s Presidency lays down the roadmap for our common digital future, a strategy that not only lays emphasis on the adoption of Digital Public infrastructure for enabling better access to public services for all, empowering people, and enabling a robust digital economy but it also addresses the key issues and challenges relating to safety, security, and trust. this approach to digital transformation will truly help realise the goal of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – one earth, one Family, one Future – digitally bringing the world together.