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The Internet Society partners with the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) on

achieving global routing security through MANRS

program promoting routing security in the
areas of research, policy, and training. Now
it’s in its fourth year with three Mentors
and nine Ambassadors from across the
globe. Today, MANRS has more than one
thousand participating operators across
three programs, as well as six network
equipment vendors. The initiative has been
a tremendous success, but the task of
supporting MANRS has grown well beyond
the scope of what was a startup initiative 10
years ago. This partnership is an important
evolution of a successful initiative that the
Internet Society launched, incubated, and
nurtured. GCA is honored and excited to
step into this role and provide the basis for
the long-term sustainability and evolution
of MANRS. Routing security is one of the
focus areas of GCA, and the Internet Society
The Internet Society has partnered with participants ranging from small enterprise and GCA have been collaborating around
the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA), an networks to Tier-1 transit providers, from MANRS since 2021 with excellent results.
international nonprofit specializing in IXPs of various sizes to content delivery GCA surveyed network operators to learn
addressing cybersecurity challenges network (CDN) and cloud providers publicly more about the state of routing security
at scale by mobilizing stakeholders professing their commitment to the MANRS implementation, the level of concern within
toward collective action. As part of this requirements. MANRS is now globally network operations and business decision-
partnership, the GCA will take on the recognized as a beacon for securing global making, and plans for the next steps. The
functions of the MANRS secretariat and routing. As MANRS matured, so did the Internet Society is dedicated to improving
operations, while the Internet Society will community-led governance model with the routing security and ensuring the best
maintain significant funding, advocacy, and establishment of the community-elected future for MANRS. Over the next five years,
training functions over the next five years. Steering Committee. The Internet Society the Internet Society will focus on funding
With this partnership, MANRS will continue has proudly served as the secretariat, in and support through training and global
to achieve greater heights and be further addition to supporting the initiative with advocacy activities, while GCA will provide
established as the globally recognized both financial and staff resources as well the secretariat function and operate the
benchmark for global routing security. In as operations support to ensure MANRS’ MANRS Observatory. GCA is uniquely
2014, the Internet Society recognized the growth. In 2019 the MANRS Observatory, placed to lead the next evolution of MANRS
industry’s willingness for collaborative a conformance measurement tool for as its focus on building communities to
agreement on best practices for routing routing security, was launched. Since then, collectively drive action towards addressing
security and helped initial participants to many new features have been added to cybersecurity challenges at scale allows it
capture and share those practices in what the MANRS Observatory, such as alerts to step into this role and provide the best
became MANRS. Since then, the Internet and monthly MANRS readiness reports. future home for the operational growth
Society has advocated globally for MANRS Growth also happened through capacity MANRS is experiencing. GCA is committed
uptake, encouraged industry collaboration, building, and over the years, thousands to maintaining the vision of MANRS and
supported the evolution of the norms, of network engineers have gone through continuing to expand its global impact.
and evolved to become the secretariat of online courses, virtual labs, and on-site With this partnership, MANRS will continue
MANRS. Fast forward a decade, and MANRS workshops. In 2020, the Internet Society, to achieve greater heights and be further
has grown from nine original operators together with the MANRS community, established as the globally recognized
to a community of more than 1,000 launched the Mentors and Ambassadors benchmark for global routing security.

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