International collaboration key to addressing cybersecurity threats

Welcome to the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative and the Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington for this first-of-a-kind event. CCI organized a meeting that brought together representatives from a number of embassies based in Washington DC to talk about international collaborations in cyber security and also about Virginia. We had a speaker from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, VDP, who could talk to them about what opportunities Virginia presents. We already work with a number of countries, Finland, the UK, Ireland, Japan, and others, in research workforce development and innovation. And we thought, okay, why not expand and open up opportunities for collaborating with new additional countries. And I'm actually very excited about what happened today because there are some representatives from countries like Slovakia and Denmark the Netherlands Latvia who we currently don't have I would say strong collaborations that are CCI wide but they all have already come to me and said okay we have already triggered some new effort or some new initiative in our countries to bring people together which is really the first step in in collaborating. Cyber security doesn't really respect borders right so and often some cyber attacks actually come from outside one's own borders so it's really important that we join forces with like-minded countries to look at challenges that come with cyber security.

impact 1:55 International collaboration key to addressing cybersecurity threats

By:

Craig Newcomb

29 Apr 2026 59

The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) is strengthening international collaboration to address widespread cyber threats by engaging embassy representatives from around the world. CCI hosted its first “Exploring International Collaboration in Cybersecurity” networking and discussion breakfast on April 28 at the Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington, Va. Embassy representatives from 13 countries included Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Sweden, Taiwan, and Türkiye.