Quad Leaders Issue Principles For Critical Tech; Secure Software & Clean Energy

The Quad leaders, in their third in-person summit, held in Hiroshima on Saturday, affirmed that the four countries are committed to bringing enduring benefit to the Indo-Pacific region by providing options that build resilience, open communication, and economic growth as they issued Joint Principles for Secure Software, Principles for Critical and Emerging Technology Standards and Principles for Clean Energy Supply Chains in the Indo-Pacific.

The Quad leaders also announced the evolution of the Quad Vaccine Partnership into a broader Quad Health Security Partnership.

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Through this partnership, Quad will strengthen coordination and collaboration in support of health security in the Indo-Pacific. The Quad leaders expressed serious concerns over militarisation in the Indo-Pacific region and call for joint action against terrorism.

The Indo-Pacific region is an “engine” of global trade, innovation, and development and its success and security are important for the whole world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his opening remarks at the Summit. Modi said that India will be happy to host the Quad Summit in 2024.

The Principles on Critical and Emerging Technology Standards announced on Saturday intended to promote interoperability, innovation, trust, transparency, diverse markets, security-by-design, compatibility, inclusiveness, and free and fair market competition.

“We are committed to supporting industry-led, consensus-based multi-stakeholder approaches to the development of technology standards, and we recognize the importance of procedures that ensure trust, transparency, openness, impartiality, and consensus,” according to Principles on Critical and Emerging Technology Standards.

“The Quad partners recognize the security risks posed by lack of adequate controls to prevent tampering with the software supply chain by adversarial and non-adversarial threats. By leveraging the voice of the Quad, we can promote and strengthen a culture where software security is by design and default…,” according to the Quad Joint Principles for Secure Software issued after the Summit.

The statement outlined certain principles to create deterrence. The Quad intends to pursue certain high-level secure software development practices and to adopt them into existing government policy, acquire software that meets these practices, and encourage software developers/suppliers to implement them.

This would entail ensuring that people are adequately trained, processes are defined, and technology solutions are in place to perform secure software development; Protecting the Software and Software Development Environment; Producing Well-Secured Software; Identifying vulnerabilities in software releases and respond appropriately to continuously address those vulnerabilities and prevent similar ones from occurring in the future.

Each member of the Quad intends to pursue the minimum guidelines for government procurement of software or a product containing software. This would entail “Require self-attestation by the software producer, unless a third-party certification is provided, stating that the software’s development complies with secure software development practices; Encourage the software developer to report to a respective national vulnerability disclosure program that includes a reporting and disclosure process.

The Quad identified five security measures for government software use including ensuring adequate controls and processes to protect software and software platforms from unauthorized access and usage and ensuring adequate controls and processes to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data used by software and software platforms.

The Quad Principles on Clean Energy Supply Chains in the Indo-Pacific aimed to expand manufacturing of clean energy technologies in parallel with exponentially increasing demand and enable commercial-scale production capabilities for critical devices, components, and systems.

Without directly referring to Chinese ambitions the Quad leaders stated that it intended to maintain and strengthen stability in the Indo-Pacific where competition is managed responsibly, in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Charter.

The Quad announced cooperation with Palau to establish a deployment of Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN), the first in the Pacific.

(With Input Feed)