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Cybersecurity Capacity Building Community Hub

As societies, economies, and governments grow ever more dependent on digital infrastructure, cybersecurity has become a prerequisite for development, stability, and the rule of law. Yet most states, particularly in developing economies, lack the cybersecurity expertise, institutional set-up, governance frameworks and financial resources to defend against a complex and fast-evolving threat landscape.

Effective international cyber capacity building (CCB) cooperation is a key consideration for ensuring that available resources, expertise, and lessons learnt are leveraged meaningfully.

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Given the rapid pace of developments in the digital landscape, needs-based capacity-building efforts need to be accelerated … in order to bridge the digital divides and ensure that all States can safely and securely seize the benefits of digital technologies.
Final report (2025) of the UN Open-Ended Working Group on Security of and in the Use of Information and Communications Technologies 2021–2025

Workstreams/Projects

The cyber capacity building (CCB) ecosystem is at a crossroads amid broader changes in the international cooperation landscape, while investments in digital cooperation and infrastructure are growing, bringing more actors into this field. This makes the need for effective avenues for cooperation, exchanges and lessons-sharing across the CCB community even more important.
The CCB Hub, a new pilot initiative set up by DCAF , with seed funding and support from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) and the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) of Switzerland, aims to help the community connect the dots and shape what comes next — guided throughout by human rights and good governance, core values that DCAF brings to all its work. 
 

In its pilot phase, the cyber capacity building Hub’s objectives are to: 

  • Revitalise the CCB community and network by connecting practitioners across regions and stakeholder groups. It will leverage contacts and relationships of former members of the defunct Global Forum on Cyber Expertise while expanding engagement with the wider digital development and international cooperation financing ecosystem. 
  • Facilitate a broad, inclusive, and multistakeholder consultation process to explore cooperation models for the next generation of the CCB community that are agile to and fit-for-purpose for the current landscape of international cooperation, representative of and responsive to community needs, and financially sustainable, while embedding good governance, transparency, accountability, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.

 

Key activities include:

  • Reconnecting and expanding the CCB network through outreach and dialogue
  • Convening the community around initiatives on improving CCB
  • Developing practical guidance based on community input
  • Running an inclusive consultation process to capture the community's needs and priorities
  • Contributing to international policy discussions on cybersecurity capacity building
     

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Contacts

Nayia Barmpaliou, CCB Community Programme Manager (n.barmpaliou@dcaf.ch)

Franziska Klopfer, Senior Manager (f.klopfer@dcaf.ch)