WASHINGTON: Government officials and business leaders from around the world will begin a three-day meeting in Texas today to discuss what all agree
is an area of common and growing concern: cybersecurity.

The Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit, hosted by the EastWest Institute (EWI), opens in Dallas and will feature discussions on ways to protect the world's digital infrastructure from electronic threats.

Among those scheduled to address the gathering, being held in the wake of sophisticated cyberattacks on Google which the Internet giant said originated in China, are President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor James Jones and White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt.

The EWI, a non-partisan think tank, is bringing together 400 government officials, business leaders and cybersecurity experts from China, France, Germany, India, Russia, the United States and nearly three dozen other countries to "map the dangers and areas of cooperation" in cyberspace.

"The skyrocketing severity and frequency of cyberattacks against businesses, governments and other institutions globally pose an ominous threat to the stability of the international economy and peace itself," according to the EWI.

"Nations have well established rules of the game on land, sea, air and in outer space," it said. "There is a significant lack of such rules in the fifth common domain - cyberspace."

Ahead of the meeting, the EWI and Public Strategies conducted a survey of government officials, business leaders and cybersecurity experts on their perception of the dangers in cyberspace.

Thirty-four government officials and 103 business executives or experts, many of whom plan to attend the cybersecurity summit in Dallas, responded to the April 19-26 survey, for which they were guaranteed anonymity.

When asked to rate the cybersecurity threat to governments and businesses on a scale of one to 10 with nine or ten representing a "profound threat," more than 80 per cent of both groups agreed that the threat ranked a six or higher.

Forty-eight percent of both groups said they faced a "profound threat" while only three per cent from each category said they faced "no threat."