Holland asks India to join global cyber crime control initiative

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The Netherlands has asked India to join in an international initiative for capacity building in the area cyber crime control to be launched in April next year.

The initiative is to be launched at the fourth Global Cyberspace Conference to be hosted by Netherlands during April 2015, Uri Rosenthal, the country's special envoy for the conference, told reporters Friday on the sidelines of a conference here on cyber security and governnace.

"We have discussed with the Indian foreign ministry for getting India on board in the initiative we'll be launching for capacity building in April," said Rosenthal, who was earlier the Dutch foreign minister.

"Your country is very active in this area (cyber crime control), and is among the countries, let's say, qualified to take part. We want to have India as a co-initiator of this important initiative," he added.

The conference in Netherlands, after previous conferences in London (2011) and Budapest (2012) and in Seoul last year, is an acknowledgement of the country's position as a hub of expertise in digital technology. It is being organised by Holland's ministries of foreign affairs and justice and security.

By hosting this conference, the Netherlands will be taking the lead in a field that affects everyone - both privately and at their jobs - every day, Rosenthal said.

Pointing to the burgeoning need for cyber security, Rosenthal said: "One million jobs are waiting to be filled in cyber security globally. A recent report has estimated that the damage through cyber crime globally is to the tune of $3 trillion."

"The need for strong cyber security solutions recently became evident through the worldwide theft of 1.2 billion login credentials derived from nearly half a million vulnerable websites," he added.

He said global consensus had now developed over the need to apply international law for "online crimes".

"That international law is not only applicable to offline crimes, but also needs to regulate the internet, is now a matter of worldwide wide consensus. But how to apply it is another matter, and global expert groups are going into this," Rosenthal said.