Cybersecurity Developments in Latin America: Problems, Models, and Cooperation Channels

Cybersecurity in Latin America has been a relatively neglected topic until the last five years. Nevertheless, Latin American countries face increasing Internet penetration, and with it increasing cyberattacks on their citizens, companies, and government institutions, drawing greater attention to the issue. Cybersecurity policy is normally reduced to the classical United States perspective of resilience and protection against cyberattacks (also reflected in the International Telecommunications Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index). Nevertheless, some countries in Latin America have developed different cybersecurity models to the traditional US one, as based on their governments’ stated objectives around the control of data. This report provides an overview of the approaches adopted in Latin America based on three major cybersecurity models: security-oriented, privacy-oriented, and control-oriented. The study classifies 19 Latin American countries based on the different models and provides a deep dive into two of them through the case studies of the most widespread models in the region: Colombia (security) and Venezuela (control). The findings show that cybersecurity developments in Latin America are still nascent in most of the region, but related models are clearly influenced by political and strategic alliances with different cyber powers. The final section provides conclusions as well as ideas for possible collaboration between Germany / the European Union and Latin America on these matters.