Cybersecurity summit seeks solutions

Governments and businesses spend US$1 trillion a year on global cybersecurity, but unlike wartime casualties or oil spills, there's no clear idea what the losses are because few will admit they've been compromised.

Cybersecurity leaders from more than 40 countries are gathering at Stanford University in California this week to consider tackling that information gap by creating a single, trusted entity that would keep track of how much hackers steal.

Cai Mingzhao, director of the State Council Information Office, acknowledged there were issues of trust to overcome - with some US cybersecurity firms pointing to attacks coming from the Chinese military. But he said countries must work together.

"In cyberspace, all countries face the same problems and ultimately share the same fate," he said.

Cai urged counterparts to establish international rules for behaviour in cyberspace, a move US State Department cyberissues co-ordinator Christopher Painter said was not necessary.

"I don't think we need a new global instrument for all these different issues," he said, noting that adopting worldwide rules would take between five and 10 years "and you end up with something that's not as strong as what we have now".

Painter said that a US-China joint working group announced by US Secretary of State John Kerry in April had met once and was moving forward on co-operating against third party threats.

One key initiative many agreed on was to create the first worldwide, high-level benchmarks for cybersecurity.

The Cyberspace Co-operation Summit was the fourth annual gathering sponsored in part by the EastWest Institute, a global security non-profit organisation.