Today the OTA released the 9th annual Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll. This year’s Audit is our most comprehensive ever, assessing more than 1000 consumer-facing sites for their adoption of best practices in consumer/brand protection, site security and responsible privacy practices. Each year the audit raises the bar, using criteria that reflect the latest regulatory environment, attack vectors and commonly accepted practices providing users with notice and control regarding their data. The goal is to provide practical advice to organizations to help them move beyond compliance to stewardship, thus protecting their customers and their brand while improving trust in the Internet itself.

Today, we released a report on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) because we know that this report can augment discussions at the WSIS Forum in Geneva and beyond!  

Andranik, Sipan, Rudolf and Vahan have several things in common: they are young, they have dreams, they love music, and they love the Internet. The four of them are visual impaired. 

They met through the Internet Availability Center at the Cultural House of the Armenian Society of Blinds (ASB). 

I had the chance to visit the Center last year and Rudolf told me: “For me the Internet is everything. I cannot imagine what my life, my studies would be without it.” 

On 13 June 2017, Internet Society Vice President, Global Engagement, Raúl Echeberría, and Senior Director, Global Internet Policy, Constance Bommelaer de Leusse, participated in the Opening Ceremony and the High-Level Policy Session on Bridging Digital Divides at the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS) 2017. Here are their reflections.

Given that within the coming years, another billion people are going come online along with billions more devices thanks to the Internet of things (IoT), we recognize that the community of Internet professionals and organizations cannot legitimately discuss access without addressing sustainability, especially as it relates to energy.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to bring immense opportunities, but it also poses challenges.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the R&D agenda of the leading Internet industry. The Silicon Valley and other startup hubs are buzzing about artificial intelligence and the issue has come at the top of policymakers’ agenda including the G20, the ITU, and the OECD, where leaders gathered this week in Paris. 

On 6 June 2017, Internet Society President & CEO Kathy Brown spoke at the Opening Session of the Next Generation Internet Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. These are her remarks as prepared.

Good Afternoon ladies and gentleman, Honorable colleagues and friends.  

Thank you, President Bonvicini for your very gracious invitation to speak at this prescient Summit on the Next Generation Internet. 

Africa has made considerable gains with regards to the Internet in the last decades. It’s Internet penetration grew by more than 400%; its international bandwidth has been multiplied by 20 just in just 5 years between 2009 and 2014; during the same period Africa’s terrestrial backbone has doubled (Internet Society, Internet Development and Internet Governance in Africa, 2015). This achievement required considerable private and public investment and brought hope for Africans, particularly its youth.

In 1997, we finally got the Internet in Nepal. Unfortunately, it was only available in the capital, Kathmandu, which is very far from my village of Nangi. But almost immediately, I started thinking of ways we could get Nangi online. I was already familiar with the Internet from studying in the United States, and I had a lot of ideas about how being online could improve life in Nangi.

For the next four years, I talked to a lot of people about how we could get connected, but nothing seemed feasible. Nangi is in a remote, mountainous part of the country, so we didn’t have wireline phone service. That meant the traditional methods of connecting to the Internet were out, and satellite Internet was prohibitively expensive.

The first ever Internet Infrastructure Security Guidelines for Africa (“the Guidelines”) was launched at the African Internet Summit (AIS2017) in Nairobi, Kenya on 30 May 2017. The Guidelines are developed by the Internet Society jointly with the African Union Commission (AUC) and advances four essential principles of Internet infrastructure security -- Awareness, Responsibility, Cooperation, and adherence to Fundamental Rights and Internet Properties. It aims to help African Union States in approaching their cyber security preparedness and is a significant first step in producing a visible and positive change in the African Internet infrastructure security landscape. 

This year, the Internet Society celebrates its 25th anniversary.  Our own history is inextricably tied to the history of the Internet. We were founded in 1992 by Internet pioneers who believed that “a society would emerge from the idea that is the Internet” – and they were right.

As part of the celebration, this September we will launch a comprehensive report that details the key forces that could impact the future of the Internet. The report will also offer recommendations for the Future and we need your input.

The Internet Society has been closely monitoring the ransomware cyber-attacks that have been occurring over the last couple of days. The malware, which has gone by multiple names, including WannaCry, WannaDecryptor, and WannaCrypt, exploits a flaw in Microsoft Windows that was first reportedly discovered by the National Security Agency (NSA). A group of hackers leaked the code for exploiting this vulnerability earlier this year, and a fix or patch was available as far back as March 2017. Since Friday, 200,000 computers in 150 countries have been compromised using this exploit. The numbers are expected to grow exponentially as people settle back into their work routines and regular use of computer systems this week.

WannaCry, or WannaCrypt, is one of the many names of the piece of ransomware that impacted the Internet last week, and will likely continue to make the rounds this week.

There are a number of takeaways and lessons to learn from the far-reaching attack that we witnessed. Let me tie those to voluntary cooperation and collaboration which together represent the foundation for the Internet’s development. The reason for making this connection is because they provide the way to get the global cyber threat under control. Not just to keep ourselves and our vital systems and services protected, but to reverse the erosion of trust in the Internet.

My interest in networking began during my time as a professor and head of the telecommunications lab at the University of Los Andes, in Merída, Venezuela, where we began experimenting with computer networks. I was one of the earliest Internet enthusiasts at our university.  Our university was the first in Venezuela to get direct access to the Internet backbone in Homestead, Florida, by means of an antenna on the roof of our lab with the satellite modem in my office.