“Safe Internet Day” initiative was held for the first time in Turkey on 23 February 2010 [1] with a conference. This initiative was set by INSAFE organization in 2004 within the scope of providing a safe Internet environment for the users and is supported by European Commission’s “Safe Internet Program”. Along with many domestic experts and government officials the conference hosted Janice Richardson, the coordinator of INSAFE organization, and Souheil Marine, Head of ICT Applications and Cyber security Division at ITU (International Telecommunications Union).
As Turk.Internet, we interviewed with INSAFE coordinator Janice Richardson [2], and with Souheil Marine, Head of ICT Applications and Cyber security Division at ITU. You can find our interview with Mr. Marine both in text and video formats below.
Turk Internet: Mr. Marine hello. We are in Istanbul for a conference about cyber security. We would like to ask you what you think about Turkey in cyber security manner. What would you advice us about this?
Souheil Marine: Well, I don’t know the exact situation in Turkey, but what I can say is more about what ITU is doing in terms of cyber security as I explained in my presentation. ITU has been tasked by the WSIS (World Summit on Information Society) to be the facilitator on the action line on ensuring the security over the Internet. And for this, we launched what we call the global cyber security agenda which is a global framework that encompass 5 main areas which are the legal areas, the organizational areas, technical area, human capacity area and the international cooperation.
Within this framework I mean within the international cooperation framework I presented this day which is devoted to the youth, our child online protection initiative which is an initiative that involves many stakeholders with ITU where we produced the guidelines for children, the parents, the educators, for industry and for the political leaders and the governments. And we can help countries in the translation of guidelines into a national framework.
Turk Internet: And we are wondering what kind of supports you can give us? Actually you said you are translating those guidelines and…
Souheil Marine: Well it’s not only translation it is more than just translation. I think the support that we can give is basically the support in human capacity. And also support in how to translate the general guidelines into a national framework. Translation doesn’t mean here just the language translation. It is adaptation to national needs so it’s up to the country to do it at the end of the day.
But of course as an international organization within our mandate we provide capacity building and we provide support to our memberships. Turkey is one of our memberships and to assist Turkey in doing these translations of the general guidelines into a national guideline, if they don’t exist. I saw that there is a guideline for children but maybe other guidelines don’t exist, I mean the guidelines for the other categories of stakeholder. So we can work with the appropriate Turkish authorities to assist them into to do these translations.
Turk Internet: And as my last question, what do you think about this conference? As you know this is the first time in Turkey for this kind of a conference.
Souheil Marine: Well, I think that it is very interesting and very encouraging to know that many countries are now feeling that Internet should become a safer place than it is. So I think that this also is something that justifies our focus on cyber security which is one of the key teams that we focused upon from starting in 2007.
Turk Internet: Thank you Mr. Marine.
Souheil Marine: Thank you.
[1]- Güvenli İnternet Günü, Türkiye’de ilk Defa Kutlandı
[2]- Richardson : Educational Ministry Should be Here, at Safe Internet Day
Kaynak : 