Cyber defense center opens for humanitarian NGOs

On February 27, 2023, the CyberPeace Institute announced the opening of the Humanitarian Cybersecurity Center (HCC) in Geneva (Switzerland). “The center is a free global resource for NGOs and humanitarian players, and its mission is to meet their security needs,” presented Stéphane Duguin, Director of the CyberPeace Institute and former member of Europol.

The HCC offers humanitarian orgs a wide a range of cyber services, including:

• assistance with cyber training for staff and cyberthreat detection;
• operational support in incident and crisis management, in case of an attack;
• setting cyber protection standards for humanitarian players.

The HCC aims to “promote collaboration between parties”, and plans on supporting a thousand NGOs by 2025. It will benefit from the input of a network of expert volunteers from the CyberPeace Builders program.

Founded in 2019, the CyberPeace Institute is a Geneva-based NGO. Its aim is to “advance the rule of law and human rights in cyberspace”. It benefits from private funding (mainly HP, the Ford Foundation, Mastercard and Microsoft), and contributes to United Nations discussions on cybersecurity.