India, US vow to deepen ties in cyberspace

PM Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama emphasised that cyberspace enables economic growth and development, and reaffirmed their commitment to an open, inter-operable, secure, and reliable internet, underpinned by the multi-stakeholder model of internet governance.

 “They committed to deepening the cooperation on cyber security and welcomed the understanding reached to finalise the framework for the US-India Cyber Relationship in the near term,” said an India-US joint statement.

The leaders committed to enhance cyber collaboration on critical infrastructure, cybercrime, and malicious cyber activity.

They have committed to continue dialogue and engagement in Internet governance fora, including in ICANN, IGF and other venues, and to support active participation by all stakeholders of the two countries in these fora.

The leaders affirmed their commitment to the voluntary norms that no country should conduct or support online activity that intentionally damages critical infrastructure or otherwise impairs the use of it.

 They also pledged that no country should conduct or support activity intended to prevent national computer security incident response teams from responding to cyber incidents, or use its own teams to enable online activity that is intended to do harm. They vowed that no country should conduct or knowingly support ICT-enabled theft of intellectual property.