A/76/187 collaborate with the international community to establish a network of points of contact “at the policy and technical levels”. In that regard, Colombia has: • Designed national and international cybersecurity exercises to regularly test its ability to communicate with other States and to respond to requests for assistance and mitigation (in particular channels of communication, protocols and procedures), through joint cybersecurity exercises. • Participated in activities within the framework of CyberEx and the CyberDrills of the International Telecommunications Union, and coordinated national crisis simulation exercises with the Joint Cyber Command. • Used pre-established national multi-stakeholder crisis resolution networks and relied on the mitigation expertise provided by the State, as well as non -State actors, during cyberoperations of this type, following best practices relating to incident reporting at the national and international levels. • Carried out activities with associations. Since the attacks by hacktivist groups against both the Government and private companies that occurred in the midst of social protests in cyberspace, the Colombian Software and IT Industry Federation has been collaborating with the Government on behalf of a group of companies to develop specific digital security solutions. As part of that collaboration, it has held meetings with the Government to consider the areas in which the Federation could support the Government and has, to that end, conducted a survey among its member companies regarding their intelligence and monitoring capacities. The Government of Colombia has cooperated with the United States in addressing malicious cyber operations against critical infrastructure. Voluntary confidence-building measures With regard to the enhancement of cooperation, including the development of focal points for the exchange of information on malicious ICT use and the provision of assistance in investigations, the National Police, through the Cyber Police Centre of the Directorate for Criminal Investigation and the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), has been collaborating with the member entities of the national Government’s Digital Security Committee in addressing three components of cybersecurity: prevention, investigation and computer forensics. Consequently, in 2020 and 2021, 32 anti-cybercrime operations were carried out, resulting in 219 arrests for cybercrimes; 14,072 cybersecurity incidents were addressed through the 24/7 virtual CAI service; the banning of 7,139 websites containing child sexual abuse material and of 1,648 illegal gambling websites was requested; and 454 news bulletins were issued. Colombia has also fostered active cooperation by implementing cyber command posts, led by the Cybersecurity Capacities Centre of Colombia, in order to consolidate cybersecurity and cyberdefence capacities in the country. The Cybersecurity Capacities Centre of Colombia has been implementing the Comprehensive Cybersecurity Strategy in order to ensure active coordination between the central judicial police and the 51 local criminal investigation units, with the aim of standardizing investigation techniques, as well as tools and mechanisms for active cooperation. As reported by the Attorney General’s Office, cybercrime has been on the rise since 2009, and increased sharply in 2019. In 2018, 22,238 cybercrimes occurred, while in 2019, 24,197 occurred, an increase of 9 per cent. That trend was consolidated in 2020: from 1 January to 31 December 2020, 35,346 cybercrimes occurred, 21-10045 9/46