Secure Hosting Meeting

With the increasing number and complexity of cyber attacks against online platforms of civil society organizations and independent media around the world, the need for efficient protection is growing. A number of organizations and companies are currently providing secure hosting services but there is little communication regarding their work and the challenges they are facing. In this training we’re planning to initiate an information sharing and discussion process among providers of secure hosting services, as well as between them and both their beneficiaries/clients and the intermediary organizations sometimes involved. The goal is to look at what the current security needs are and how they are addressed by the ecosystem, as well as generate thoughts, ideas and plans around the following key questions:

- How to handle more varied complex and massive cyber attacks?- How to provide full
-scale comprehensive protection against all forms of attacks?- How to communicate and act efficiently when cyber attacks happen?
- How to develop some level of interoperability between secure hosting platforms?
- How are the user’s needs addressed by the current ecosystem?

Such exchange will benefit all the actors involved:

- Secure hosting providers will learn about each other's approaches and explore ways to improve overall efficiency.
- Beneficiaries/clients of secure hosting will share their experience and express their needs.
- Intermediary organizations will learn more about both the clients/beneficiaries' needs and the secure hosting providers' offering and challenges.

The event aims to be the first step of a dialogue to raise the standards of secure hosting for the benefit of users of that service. Based on the discussions, to consider several follow up initiatives:

- preparing a list of recommendations for secure providing providers and users;
- preparing a mapping of the current secure hosting offer;
- preparing an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the secure hosting sector at large;
- setting up of a secure hosting working group to address issues of information exchange, emerging collaborative projects (on interoperability, standards, etc.), and alignment with the user needs and evolving cyber attack landscape .

Morning: Issues and Needs
- Introduction: What do we mean by secure hosting?
- State of play of cyber attacks: types of current threats and attacks
- State of the market of secure hosting offer: types of actors, affordability, and outreach
- Meet the users: protection challenges and secure hosting experience
- Challenges in secure hosting provision

Afternoon: Technology and Innovation
- Comprehensive secure hosting approach
- Experience sharing: human rights friendly operators/providers, detection patterns, and information sharing networks
- Next steps and innovation: raising the stakes in quality of service, detection, emergency response, crowd deflecting, coordination and information sharing mechanisms, interoperability and coordinated defence.