Davos leaders urge India, US to join coalition against cyber threats

Emphasising that cybersecurity is crucial to keep the world safe, global leaders have urged India and the US to join an international coalition against cyber threats.

"The world's biggest democracy needs to stand with the world's other great democratic nations. The world needs India," Microsoft's President and Chief Legal Officer Bradford L Smith said here at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019.

Participating in a panel discussion on 'A new architecture for cyber cooperation', he said, "It is really about keeping the world safe."
Smith attributed the US reluctance to sign to the current American administration's aversion to multilateralism, but warned, "Some of the most serious attacks are those against democracy itself. The most significant threat is to voting systems."
He acknowledged the difficulty of assessing the actual impact of interference operations on the outcome of the 2016 US election, but said, "Let's focus on what we do know."
Action needs to be taken, he added. "The public has developed a keen ability to differentiate between words and deeds."
He, however, said that "we shouldn't look to the private sector alone to respond to what are essentially military grade cyber attacks. The private sector has not saved the nation from military attacks before."