The Justice Department said Tuesday night that the government officials from the United States and China held a second set of meetings involving cyber crime and related issues and decided to continue to work on information sharing and to hold another tabletop exercise.
The first joint dialogue between government representatives of the two countries was held last December to follow up on commitments made last September between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at preventing government support of cyber theft of intellectual property.
At the second dialogue on Tuesday, the sides agreed to cooperate in four additional areas around cyber-enabled crime, including online child pornography distribution, misuse of technology and communications for terrorist activities, commercial email compromise/phishing, and online firearms trafficking.
Another outcome from Tuesday’s meetings was agreement on enhancing case investigations and information exchange related to cyber crime and other malicious cyber activities, and for sharing cyber threat information on a regular basis, “including increasing information sharing of malicious software samples and related analysis reports.”
The sides also agreed that there was value in a cyber tabletop exercise in April and that another focused on cyber crime and network protection will be held.
The two sides also reached consensus on a cyber crime hotline mechanism that will be tested before this September. Additionally, this August China will host its U.S. counterparts for a network security and protection working-level expert seminar.
U.S. officials from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice participated in the second dialogue. A third high level dialogue will take place in the second half of 2016 in Washington, D.C.