Microsoft calls for 'Digital Geneva Convention' to dissuade nation-state hacking

Tech giant ‘Microsoft’s’ President Brad Smith recently pushed the world's governments to build a worldwide body to protect civilians from state-sponsored hacking. For his demand he justified that, recent high-profile attacks showed a want for global standards to police government activity in cyberspace.

It is been ascertained  that countries need to build up and abide by global rules for cyber-attacks similar to those established for armed conflict at the 1949 Geneva Convention that followed World War Two, Smith said. He also added that, Technology companies need to preserve trust and stability online by pledging neutrality in cyber conflict.

"We need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to implement the norms needed to protect civilians on the Internet in times of peace," Smith said in a blog post.

Additionally, Smith delineated his proposal during keynote remarks at this week's RSA cyber-security conference in San Francisco, following a 2016 US presidential election marred by the hacking and disclosure of Democratic Party emails that US intelligence agencies finished were carried out by Russia in order to help Republican Donald Trump win.

Considering on what has happened previously, Cyber – attacks have increasingly been used in recent years by governments to achieve foreign policy or national security objectives, sometimes in direct support of traditional battlefield operations. But, despite a rise in attacks on governments, infrastructure and political institutions, few international agreements at present exists governing satisfactory use of nation-state cyber-attacks.

According to Smith, President Donald Trump is capable to build on those agreements by sitting down with Russian President Vladimir Putin to "hammer out a future agreement to ban the nation-state hacking of all the civilian aspects of our economic and political infrastructures."

A Digital Geneva Convention would be extremely profitable from the creation of a sovereign organization to inspect and publicly reveal proof that attributes nation-state attacks to specific countries, Smith stated in his blog post.