The Reliability of Global Undersea Communications Cable Infrastructure (ROGUCCI) Global Summit convened leading scientists and engineers, the financial sector and other stakeholders to examine ways to better protect the web of sub-sea fiber optic cables that the world relies on for Internet connectivity.

IEEE, the world's largest technical professional association and lead organizer of the event, identified the technical steps necessary to better protect undersea cables. It is relying on EWI to orchestrate the international policy coordination necessary to implement its recommendations.

The world is almost entirely reliant on undersea connectivity for daily operations of governments, businesses and individuals. The ROGUCCI Global Summit generated ideas to better protect this infrastructure and to improve its resilience and geographic diversity.

Recommendations from the event will be detailed in a report due for release in the first quarter of 2010. The report will include:

1. A systematic review of the intrinsic vulnerabilities of undersea cables;
2. Measures necessary to improve the speed of repair of damaged cables and the international coordination necessary to streamline them;
3. Recommendations to increase the geographic diversity of undersea cables so global connectivity is not entirely reliant on relatively few communications routes;
4. Proposals for internationally acceptable rapid-response priorities in case of damage to cable infrastructure due to accident or hostile activity.

EWI Chairman Francis Finlay, President and CEO John Edwin Mroz, Distinguished Fellow Karl Rauscher and Cybersecurity Director Vartan Sarkissian all played leading roles in the event. EWI will use the recommendations of the final report as a starting-point to forge collective international action to better protect global undersea communications cable infrastructure.