Southeast Asian Perspectives on Cybersecurity

This report by Eric Siyi Zhang and Rogier Creemers examines how ASEAN and its member states understand the issue of cybersecurity, and how they navigate the growing geopolitical situation around this issue. It also discusses how Europe can best find its role in cybersecurity cooperation with the region.

This report aims to provide a better understanding of the Indo-Pacific region’s conceptualisation and approaches to cybersecurity, as well as the diversity therewithin. It first highlights that ASEAN’s approaches to cybersecurity follows an economic-development logic, where security is a means to realise its ambitions in the digital economy.

The report will then explain ASEAN’s geopolitical outlook in cyberspace and how the group approaches its external relations. The following section discusses how domestic factors in countries in the region can lead to distinctive conceptualisations and threat perceptions in cyberspace. Next, the report summarises the perspectives from the region on the issue of public cyber attribution, and explains why it is unlikely that countries in the region will pivot to public attribution in the near future as the following three key issues remain unresolved, i.e. capabilities, effectiveness, and geopolitical sensitivity.

The conclusion and discussion of this report explore what Europe’s future role in cybersecurity cooperation with Southeast Asia could be.