Legal dignitaries and cyber experts who spoke online at an international conference on Cyberlaw, Cybercrime and Cybersecurity said that after the pandemic triggered a data avalanche on the Internet which dramatically increased vulnerabilities to cyberattacks, nations have been forced to introduce more extensive legal frameworks to ensure data security and privacy for their netizens and cyber sovereignty for themselves.
“It is critical for technology to accurately pinpoint people who contravene with personal data privacy, government security and break the rules of the Internet, the data superhighway. It could be something like a driver’s license as violations are trackable thus easily identifying violators”, said Vint Cerf, Google Chief Internet Evangelist, who is considered one of the ‘fathers of the Internet’.
Globally, some $6 trillion have been lost by nations to cybercrimes in 2020 and more than $8 trillion in losses are estimated in 2021. As per Gartner Research, 63% of the countries all over the world are planning to come up with cyberprivacy-related legislation by 2023 as cybersecurity issues have emerged as a top concern for several governments.
“With cyberlaw is a constantly evolving paradigm, most governments are working on holistic legal methods to safeguard their critical information infrastructure (CIS) and protect rights and digital independence of netizens. New technologies are increasingly putting the focus back on pushing the envelope of cyberlegal jurisprudence globally. So, nations have realized the importance of creating distinctive sub-disciplines of law under the cyberlaw umbrella such as cybersecurity, cybercrime, law for artificial intelligence, blockchain and IoT, among others”, said Pavan Duggal, cyberlaw expert and author of several books on cyber regulations.
