For Europe and the Gulf, the significance of this debate lies in a familiar institutional challenge: security responsibilities are divided among organisations, while the consequences of a serious incident rarely respect those divisions.
The South Korean proposal is not yet a completed reform, nor is it evidence that one central authority can resolve every cybersecurity problem. The public record at this stage concerns a call to consider a coordinating mechanism. That modest but important distinction should guide any international lesson. A new institution can improve coordination, but its success depends on what it is legally empowered to decide and how it works with organisations that already carry responsibility.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung – PHOTO/ AHN YOUNG-JOON via REUTERS
Governments often discover fragmentation only after a crisis has begun. One agency holds threat intelligence, another regulates the affected sector, a third oversees digital infrastructure and a fourth communicates with the public. Each may perform its assigned function correctly, yet the overall response can still fail because no one resolves conflicting priorities quickly enough. The problem is not always a shortage of competence. Sometimes it is an absence of agreed authority at the point where separate responsibilities meet.
This question is relevant to Spain, to the wider European Union and to Gulf states pursuing ambitious digital transformation. Financial platforms, public services, transport and energy infrastructure depend on private providers and international networks. A breach at one company may create consequences for citizens and institutions in several jurisdictions. National leadership can set expectations, but it cannot eliminate the need for decisions at the sectoral and operational levels.
A central cybersecurity coordinator should therefore be judged by three practical tests. The first is visibility. Can it obtain reliable information from relevant agencies and major service operators quickly enough to understand a developing incident? The second is decision authority. Can it resolve a dispute over isolation, disclosure or resource allocation without waiting for an improvised chain of approvals? The third is accountability. When an instruction creates commercial or safety consequences, is it clear who issued it and on what grounds?
A security breach at a company can have consequences for citizens and institutions across various jurisdictions – REUTERS/ DADO RUVIC
The temptation to answer fragmentation with a large new headquarters should be resisted. More centralisation can create a bottleneck if every operational decision must travel upward. A central authority that receives too many routine alerts may become less capable of recognising the few events that require national coordination. It also risks weakening responsibility within sectors if operators assume that a national office will take over whenever the situation becomes difficult.
A better design separates national coordination from operational command. Hospitals should retain authority over clinical safety, utilities over safe system operation and financial institutions over immediate customer protection, within clear legal duties. A national coordinating body can establish common thresholds for escalation, require timely information sharing, arbitrate conflicts between agencies and oversee communication where incidents cross institutional boundaries.
The same logic should shape cooperation between Europe and the Gulf. Shared commercial corridors and digital partnerships make incident information valuable across borders. Yet information exchange alone is insufficient. Partners need to know whom to contact, what information can legally be shared, how to validate a warning and who has authority to act on it. An international agreement that promises cooperation without operational contact points may be weakest at the moment it is most needed.
A photograph of a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman – PHOTO/ARCHIVE
Exercises offer a practical way to reveal whether coordination mechanisms are real. Instead of rehearsing a scenario where every participant follows the script, authorities could introduce contradictory reports from a regulator and an operator, an unavailable cloud supplier, or a false public warning that spreads faster than verification. The question should be whether institutions can make a legitimate decision without sacrificing accuracy, public trust or essential services.
South Korea’s debate is useful precisely because it treats cyber risk as a problem of government organisation rather than only a technical contest. Europe and the Gulf do not need to copy a single institutional model. Their legal systems and administrative structures differ. They can, however, apply the same test to existing arrangements: identify the decisions that fall between agencies and make someone clearly responsible for resolving them.
A cybersecurity tsar may provide political focus. That is valuable, but focus is not a substitute for a working chain of responsibility. The real achievement would be a system in which the right institution can make the right decision before a digital failure turns into a national disruption.
About the author
Abdulla Saeed Alhebsi, MIoL, is a UAE-based author and independent researcher specialising in security, risk management, operational resilience and institutional governance. He is a Member of the Institute of Leadership (UK).
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