Authorized Authorized

222 WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2016
Map 4.1 Evidence of internet content filtering
Europe Inset
Level of political content filtering
No evidence
Selective
Substantial
Pervasive
No data available
Caribbean Inset
Source: Open Network Initiative, http://map.opennet.net/filtering-pol.html. Data at http://bit.do/WDR2016-Map4_1.
IBRD 41702
traffic to its products—China, the Democratic Republic
of Congo, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan,
Tajikistan, and Turkey. 94 Excessive restrictions on use
can increase the costs of doing business, particularly
for international businesses, which may be dissuaded
from investing. 95 In addition, inconsistent and complex
content filtering requirements can make it difficult
to offer internet services and applications that
are global in nature. Policy makers in governments
that impose such restrictions have to choose between
the relative perceived advantages of controlling certain
kinds of information and the economic costs,
including lost opportunities, of maintaining such
systems.
Cybersecurity: Trust in the internet
will come from balancing the security
of networks and information with the
protection of individual rights
The term “cybersecurity” is a convenient shorthand
for a very complex set of issues. It commonly refers
to systems and actions aimed at securing data and
communications over the internet and even the infrastructure
of the internet itself. 96 It also sometimes
includes “cybercrime.” The more common threats
to cybersecurity are malware, denial of service, and
phishing attacks (attempts to acquire sensitive information
online by someone who is masquerading as
a trusted entity), but cyberincidents are increasingly
perpetrated by disaffected insiders. So, cybersecurity
usually refers to securing data and infrastructure in a
civilian context; but acts that might previously have
been considered civilian attacks are now being uncovered
as acts of states against states via nonstate actor
proxies, blurring the lines between acts of cybercrime
and cyberwar or cyberterrorism. Threats to personal
security online, such as online identity theft, are
also growing. This may erode public confidence in
e-commerce and e-government applications, and
make internet use less attractive, thus suppressing its
use for certain applications. Likewise, cybersecurity
can include securing critical information infrastructure
from acts of nature, such as developing backup
facilities in alternative locations.
However defined, weak cybersecurity is a significant
problem worldwide, with both the scale of
financial losses, and the costs of preventing them,
growing (box 4.8). New breaches of security over