As part of the UK's staunch and diverse efforts to secure a safe and global digital environment which fosters innovation and growth in the internet, on Friday, our Foreign Secretary, William Hague signed the World Economic Forum's (WEF) new set of principles on Cyber Resilience.
Essential for international peace and security and to unite governments and industry, it is crucial that our countries capitalise on our maturity and expertise in cyber and take a responsible, collective approach. Demonstrating our leadership at the Annual WEF Meeting in Davos, Francis Maude, UK Minister for Cyber Security at the Cabinet Office, is participating in a number of events to support the principles which promote awareness, understanding and action on cyber resilience and will help tackle global cyber risk challenges. The UK is committed to building global cyber capacity and supporting business. Through this initiative the UK has joined over 70 companies and government bodies across 15 sectors and 25 countries to demonstrate their leadership and commitment to taking a responsible and collective approach to ensuring secure, resilient digital global networks.
The WEF also endorsed the UK's guidance for industry, citing it as excellent example of how to put principles in practice. This advice was launched last September to Chief Executives of a number of the UK's largest companies and sets out how board members and senior executives should adopt a holistic risk management approach to cyber security in order to safeguard their most valuable assets.
The UK continues to capitalise on all avenues to pursue our cyber objectives in coordination with international partners and in international fora, including our Presidency of the G8. We hope to expand the benefits that the digital age provides and continue to focus on efforts to build national capacity to address threats in cyberspace and work towards developing a framework of norms of behaviour to help reduce the threat of conflict in cyberspace.
The UK is also working up the constructs for the new Global Cyber Security Capacity Building Centre announced last October, which will be hosted within the UK's network of Centres of Excellence for Cyber Security. Currently eight Universities have been awarded this status based on their world class research capability. The Centre, led by specialist researchers and an outreach team, will research cyber security initiatives across the globe to guide where organisations should direct their valuable resources to ensure the best results in tackling cyber crime and other cyber threats.
Through this work we will ensure multi stakeholder collaboration facilitates the exchange of best practice and expertise to advance our collective securities globally.