The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues, and the global focal point for governments and the private sector in developing networks and services.

The World Federation of Scientists (WFS) was founded in Erice, Sicily, in 1973, by a group of eminent scientists led by Isidor Isaac Rabi and Antonino Zichichi. Since then, many other scientists have affiliated themselves with the Federation, among them T. D. Lee, Laura Fermi, Eugene Wigner, Paul Dirac and Piotr Kapitza.

This chapter presents an overview of the challenges and current efforts under way to define a set of norms, principles and best practices for cybersecurity at the international level. Emerging threats from espionage to warfare-like attacks and the multi-stakeholder, transnational, and technical nature of the Internet present an unusual field for States in cyberspace: national governments face a domain over which they usually have only tangential control, but in relation to which they are increasingly compelled to protect their citizens, especially as regards their human rights. Some comprehensive regional and a limited number of global efforts are currently being made towards establishing common, basic norms that aim to attain such protection.