The Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) has funded CyberGreen to continue research and development of its Internet Infrastructure Health Metrics Framework.

One of the most important conditions for enabling robust cooperation in cyberspace is the availability of cross-comparable statistics that empower decision makers to set policies based on evidence, establish priorities, and view trends. The key focus is on making various statistics produced at the national level cross comparable, rather than merely sharing information. The medical community has established frameworks for risk indicators and courses of treatment based on those indicators. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) publishes global statistics on key risk indicators prioritized by the global community to provide information on the health situation and trends, including responses at national and global levels. They also provide a registry for indicator definitions, data sources, and methods of estimation. ERIA has funded the 1st phase study of the project to develop a framework for Internet health. Under ERIA’s support, CyberGreen took on the ambitious mission of researching and understanding the different indicators associated with the health of Internet infrastructure, developing a model to correlate public health with Internet health, and preparing a set of technical mitigation recommendations based on the chosen indicators.

This research project will be built on the achievements of the first phase study. It aims to further develop the framework for Internet health metrics by addressing some areas of policy highlights. Developing the scoring system will be a useful application of the metric framework. It will help policymakers and other users better understand the key symptoms of unhealthiness/sickness in the cyberspace, as well as their origins and potential risks. Particularly for developing countries, the scoring system could provide some preliminary information on the country’s Internet health and be used as a reference to identify areas of capacity building to promote secured and sustainable digital infrastructure development. CyberGreen plans to develop and maintain a prototype database and data platform to test the full workflow from data collection to scoring.

CyberGreen looks forward to its continued partnership with ERIA, which has provided significant support towards this important endeavor.

The report from the first phase of the project can be found here.