 We are here at the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2014 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I am pleased to be joined by Mr Marco Abiso, who is cyber security coordinator for ITU, and Mr Aaron Boyd, Chief Strategy Officer for ABI Research. Thank you for being here today. We will be talking about the Global Cyber Security Index, known as GCI. It is a joint initiative launched by ITU and ABI Research to measure countries' levels of cyber security development. Marco, I'd like to start off by asking you the first question. Why is it important to measure countries' capability levels in cyber security? Thanks for the question, Max, and good morning to all of you. It is very, very important for the ITU to first of all partner with the private sector, with the industry, because we are seeing that while we are a global platform for dialogue, of course we rely a lot on partnership with the industry in order to get added value and to get fresh data that is coming from the market and is coming, let's say, from the ICT environment. Now, this partnership is quite strategic for us because through the elaboration of the GCI we have managed to, and we are managing to, let's say, get a little bit more understanding of the level of preparedness. Now, this is of the fundamental importance of the countries because they would be able to really understand what is the threats landscape at the national level, more related to the policy making development, to the capabilities that are there, to the level of capacity building that they have, and overall to the level of awareness that they have. So, as the ITU and the specific ITU is the, let's say, if you want the part of the ITU that is dealing with building capacity, we are seeing this as a mechanism to allow the countries to understand the level of readiness at the national level, but also to compare the level of readiness with the other countries in order to learn and to improve their overall cybersecurity. Aaron, can I ask you, how does the Global Security Index work and how do you collect the data? Well, first let me talk about the importance of this partnership. ABI research has a long 23-year tradition of fantastic research in the telecom sector and over the past few years on cybersecurity but we needed a partner like the ITU in order to reach to develop an index that's on a global scale. ITU has those contacts and connections and the ITU itself, if I could explain briefly what it is and what it is not. The GCI is an indicator of readiness, the willingness of a country to take the necessary steps to protect its critical infrastructure, to put legal measures in place, to look at child online protection and other kinds of policies like that. It's not a measurement of technical expertise per se. It follows the global cybersecurity agenda. There were five pillars that included legal aspects, various national policies, technical aspects and so we cover all of those areas and then out of that when a country responds we develop a weighted index just like any of the other indices that you see being produced by the ITU. And Marco, how is GCI impacting the ITU and what are the overall benefits we might be able to see? Through this partnership and I would say through also the cooperation and the close collaboration that we have with the member states and with the other international organization and the private sector, we really aim at building this kind of a platform for exchange of best practices first of all, but also to, as I said before to instigate this process of building capacity. Now, from one side the GCI will be able, as Aron was mentioning, will be able to capture a little bit the level of readiness but the secondary and even more important result is that we'll be able to, let's say, facilitate the understanding from the countries on their level of readiness and their positioning within the global environment. And this is strictly linked to the fundamental issue that we have on cybersecurity, that there are global issues, not something that can be confined at the national level. So as soon as we approach this in a global way and we try to have a global understanding of course focusing through a bottom up approach on the national level we will automatically give the possibility to the countries to measure their level of readiness to understand what is happening in the other countries and in the other regions, but more importantly to really redefine or possibly improve or shape the policies and let's say the capabilities that are already in place or that need to be put in place in order to achieve the kind of a global culture of cybersecurity. In doing so, of course there will be then a whole process of, let's say, internal coordination at the national level with the stakeholders that are the key actors that are already there, but also in terms of linking up to the organization that already present the international environment to the private sector and to the United Nations if you want but also to the regional organization in order to instigate this process of cooperation. For us this is the most important, the most important value that we can provide through mechanisms like the GCI. Finally, Aaron, can I ask you, can you give us an update of the data that's been collected so far and what are the next steps? Sure, we've received responses from 42 countries already. There's another 16 that have indicated that they'll be responding shortly. We've released the results of the Arab States region. We did that in last October at ITU Telecom World and we're planning on releasing results of the Africa region on May 14th at the Council session. Great, let's hope that this succeeds and goes on from strength to strength. Thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Thank you to you and thank you for watching.