Cybersecurity and internet governance were at the top of the agenda at this week’s MIT ECIR Workshop, which brought together leaders from both academia and the IT industry to discuss the impact of digital technology on the physical world. Wikibon’s Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly kicked off the event live on theCUBE with Charles Sennott, the co-founder and Editor-at-Large of GlobalPost.

Two decades after the web revolutionized information delivery, data connectivity is seeping into every aspect of our lives and adding new layers of complexity to international relations, Vellante observes. But as is the case with all disruptive technologies, governance has taken the backseat to innovation, a burning issue that the ECIR summit is seeking to address.

In his opening address on Monday, distinguished Harvard professor Joseph Nye named the overemphasis on cyberthreats as one of the main barriers to establishing a standard set of rules for the internet. Sennott agrees, highlighting that the risks should not be allowed to overshadow the opportunities in information technology.

“There are definite rising security threats that come with cyberspace and with all of the potential that’s in it for disruption of governance, of corporate America – the Snowden effect,” Sennott says. “We really have this sense that things could put forth some peril for our country. But we also have great opportunity and a great need now to think through governance.”

Sennott believes that U.S. dominance over online resources must also be addressed to successfully implement internet governance on a global scale. In particular, he believes that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Los Angeles-based nonprofit established to regulate the web on behalf of the government, should be reformed to accommodate foreign cyberpowers such as Germany, China and Russia.

“Fadi Chehadé, who is the president of ICANN […] was saying it’s not sustainable,” Sennott reflects. “The model that he is presiding over is not sustainable because the internet is about connecting the world, it is the worldwide web, and if we are going to have the worldwide web reflect a collective sense of governance we’re gonna have to be more inclusive.”

There is a certain sense of urgency to democratize ICANN, and justifiably so in the wake of foreign efforts to fork the web and ensure that all data is stored within local jurisdictions. If realized, these initiatives would negatively impact the world economy and undermine the push to coordinate global internet governance, Sennott explains.