Pacific Forum, DFAT Launch Cyber ASEAN: Southeast Asia’s Homegrown Cyber-Capacity Assessment Framework

(Honolulu, Hawaii, March 20, 2024)---Pacific Forum in partnership with Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) released the special report, “Cyber ASEAN: Advancing Cyber Resiliency and Capacity in Southeast Asia.” Cyber ASEAN is the region’s homegrown cyber-capacity assessment framework comprising four pillars: international collaboration, international technical standards, information-sharing, and incident or threat management and inclusion. 

Built around the key dimensions of the ASEAN Cybersecurity Cooperation Strategy 2021-2025, the report’s publication is the outcome of the multistakeholder consultations held in Indonesia, Malaysia, Viet Nam, and the Philippines throughout 2022 to 2024.

Adopting a participatory design approach called 3C—consultative, collaborative, and community-building— Cyber ASEAN contends that if cyber capacity-building frameworks are informed and shaped by the target stakeholders at the very onset before application, then Southeast Asia can produce more context-specific and inclusive policies and initiatives to harmonize and elevate cyber-capacity at the sectoral, national, and regional levels.

Cyber ASEAN: Advancing Cyber Resiliency and Capacity in Southeast Asia

Because the intended users are involved from the conceptualization to the implementation of the Cyber ASEAN Framework, it ensures a degree of local buy-in and ownership that may lead to its adoption and adaptation as demonstrated by the key findings from the four countries covered in this report. 

The Cyber ASEAN report is divided into two interlinked sections: Foundation and Application. 

Setting the context for the report, Part I: Foundation tackles the “so-what” of Cyber ASEAN, specifically the need to reimagine the conduct of cyber capacity-building in Southeast Asia. The proceeding chapters then examine the evolution of cybersecurity cooperation in ASEAN before diving into the strategic and economic imperatives of raising cyber-capacity.

In Part II: Application, the Cyber ASEAN Framework is operationalized. Each chapter provides the main findings of the multistakeholder country consultations held in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Hanoi:

We invite you to immerse yourself in this publication to grasp Southeast Asia’s first homegrown cyber capacity assessment framework, which highlights the region’s complex cybersecurity challenges, as well as its innovative, entrepreneurial, and inclusive approaches.

To download the report and learn more about Cyber ASEAN, visit cyberasean.pacforum.org