Back in 2010, US President Barack Obama launched the Nuclear Security Summit process, a series of high-level global meetings aimed at locking down or eliminating loose nuclear materials. Many of the 47 countries that attended made and fulfilled pledges to reduce their stockpiles, but there was no universal measuring stick to evaluate where they stood or how they progressed. In 2012, the Nuclear Threat Initiative helped fill that gap when it came out with the first Nuclear Security Index. For the first time, the world had a baseline assessment of nuclear materials security in 176 countries. Last week the Nuclear Threat Initiative published its third Index, which contains both sobering news and useful tools for the nonproliferation community as it prepares for the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit at the end of March. After the index was released, Bulletin contributing editor Elisabeth Eaves interviewed former US Senator Sam Nunn, who is co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and perhaps most famous as co-architect of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which for more than two decades provided assistance to former Soviet states to help secure and destroy old weapons of mass destruction.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 21st Jan 2016 read more »
Nuclear facilities across the world have little or no real security to help protect themselves against cyberattacks, according to new analysis. The third edition of the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NIT) Nuclear Security Index found that close to half the countries assessed by the organization do not have a single requirement in place to protect their nuclear facilities from such attacks. Worryingly, only nine of the 24 countries with ‘weapons-usable nuclear materials’ achieved the maximum score for cybersecurity, suggesting that many have underestimated the seriousness of this growing threat. China, Argentina, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Italy, Belgium and Iran were just a few of the countries found to be lacking in adequate levels of security.
We Live Security 21st Jan 2016 read more »