We interviewed Stéphane Duguin, CEO of the CyberPeace Institute and leader of one of the organizations most actively supporting Common Good Cyber, on the sidelines of the kick-off workshop in Washington D.C., which brought together 120 key players in the global cybersecurity field.
Common Good Cyber is a collaborative effort aimed at building sustainable funding models to support those who secure the Internet for everyone.
You can watch the full interview HERE.
We interviewed Stéphane Duguin, CEO of the CyberPeace Institute and leader of one of the organizations most actively supporting Common Good Cyber, on the sidelines of the kick-off workshop in Washington D.C., which brought together 120 key players in the global cybersecurity field.
Common Good Cyber is a collaborative effort aimed at building sustainable funding models to support those who secure the Internet for everyone.
You can watch the full interview HERE.
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What is your message to the cyber community?
It’s a message of hope and it’s a bit of two words: At last!
At last, the cyber community is recognized as a critical community which today is in the front line, ensuring that all of us have access to meaningful connectivity and Internet services in a long term sustainable manner.
And finally, this community that is doing this for the common good is recognized and worth of support.
Why do you think it’s so hard for orgs to find funding?
The world is going through a nonstop series of crises being a climate or geopolitical conflict, so it’s a very complicated situation to attract interest and to convince funders and to inspire volunteers around a common cause.
It’s kind of logical. But it doesn’t mean that there’s not a systemic problem that these organizations are facing.
It’s a strange equation if you think about it. On one hand you have organizations which are doing good for everyone and on the other hand there’s a scarcity of funding and capacity to help them. We absolutely need to address this.
What are your hopes for this gathering and this effort?
Finally, we’re going to put the right data on the table, we’re going to give the space to co-create solutions and ensure we have systemic solutions to help the community because so far, it’s been a galaxy of civil society organizations going for piecemeal of fundraising towards more or less the same funders and trying, let’s say, to survive. The ambition should be more than survival.
The Internet is everywhere. It’s a shared resource. We believe it has to be free.
Interoperable. It must be a surface of growth, freedom and human rights. It can’t be that the organizations defending this need have to fight for their survival almost on a monthly basis.
What’s the risk if we can’t find more funding for these cyber nonprofits?
The risk is enormous. And I’m not sure it’s understood. And it comes from this usual misunderstanding when it comes to cyber, it feels virtual, you know, like fluffy somewhere.
No one really understands that today’s cyber is access to water, is access to food Is the capacity for you to do online banking, to connect with your family, to have access to education. If the entities working for the common good, defending the core of the infrastructure that is today’s “cyber” and making sure that everything works are in danger, the risk is indeed enormous.
