Global Internet Ecosystem - Urgent Action Required

Global Internet Ecosystem – Urgent Action Required

Posted: July 31st, 2016

By Bruce McConnell

Bruce McConnell is the Global Vice President of the EastWest Institute. He leads the Institute's Global Cooperation in Cyberspace Initiative, working with governments and the private sector to make cyberspace safer and more secure. Prior to joining EWI, he served as Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, responsible for ensuring the cybersecurity of all federal civilian agencies and the most critical U.S. infrastructure.

Many metaphors have been applied to the Internet—information superhighway, World Wide Web, cyberspace, etc.—each evoking its different aspects. A more comprehensive view is that the Internet – overlapping global networks of people, technology, and ideas – shares key features with a rainforest or a coral reef; a community of living organisms and their surrounding environment, interacting as a system.

Over the past 50 years, the Internet and the technologies that support it have evolved into an ever more complex ecosystem, expanding their reach into every corner of human activity and every part of the planet. Life as we know it today would be impossible without the global Internet.

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