ITM Working Group

Why this group?

“The Internet is for everyone. How easy to say – how hard to achieve!” as said Vint Cerf, a father of Internet and of Internet Society in an historical speech (read the full Vint Cerf’s speech).

The Internet is for everyone, – but it won’t be if… and the list of threats to Internet is quite long.

We need to explain to people what Internet could be if… a threat becomes reality. As Ted Hardie from Internet Society’s Board of Trustees wrote: “what the world would look like with an Internet that has succumbed to these threats.   One in which encryption provides no confidentiality; one in which access to the network is determined by state approval rather than voluntary association; one in which every piece of content or commentary must be submitted to algorithmic acceptance prior to being made visible.”

Purpose

ITM Working Group means Internet Threats Modelling Working Group. Its purpose is to engage volunteers from the Internet Society community to work, with a structured approach, to identify, quantify, communicate and understand threats and mitigations within the context of protecting something of value: Internet.

We also want to make those threats measurable, and to make results available on platforms such as Internet Pulse, and linked to others as Internet Poverty Index.

Sessions are non-technical and do not require any particular skill : the purpose is to model threats to make them understandable by anyone, and to provide video’s of what Internet could be, if… inspired in this by what Internet Society did around 2010 on Youtube.

What is a Threat?

For our work, a threat to the Internet is a threat to the Internay Way of Networking, to an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet, as described in the Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit (IIAT).

This approach inspired from OWASP and System Dynamics, an approach to developing strategies for effective change
that employs systems thinking and computer simulation.

To work collectively in an efficient manner, we work Agile “Kanban style”, the group taking, from a list of threats identified in a SWOT analysis, the next threat we’ll model. The first analysed threat is the “breach to end-to-end encryption”.

How to join?

More people to provide input and feedback, the better the result will be.

While being an initiative of the Belgium Chapter, anyone member of Internet Society is invited to participate, please join our chapter and register to attend sessions. Our chapter being also part of ICANN At-Large Structure EURALO, all members are also invited to join.

Next online session: Thursday February 23th at 4pm CET (2023-02-23 at 3pm UTC).
Link: https://www.internetsociety.be/events/internet-threats-modelling/

All sessions will be held in English as working language.
In the future, we plan some physical meetings in Belgium, including in Dutch and French.

Any question? Contact us by writing to info@isoc.be.