August 2016 was a special month as it marked the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, when Tim Berners-Lee made it openly available for people to use. Also in this month, the South Asian Network Operators Group (SANOG) held its 28th conference (SANOG28).

SANOG's biannual conferences provide a regional forum for network operators and other professionals to exchange knowledge and engage in meaningful dialogue to advance the Internet. This is important for two key reasons. First, a quarter of a century after the Internet is made publicly available, it still cannot be accessed by over half of the world's population, and by about 88% of South Asia's population. Second, being connected to a global Internet comes with many challenges, particularly related to security, privacy and maintaining openness, which needs to be addressed collaboratively.

SANOG28, held in Mumbai, India, was jointly hosted by the Internet Service Providers Association of India and the National Internet Exchange of India, with Internet Society (ISOC) and Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) as platinum sponsors. Over 200 people participated in the two-day conference and the technical workshops and tutorials that followed. Participants included leaders of global technical forums (APNIC, ICANN), ISOC Asia-Pacific Chapter members, representatives from tech giants (Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft), and various other local, regional and global entities.

Information is power, and we have always had a thirst for information. The Mughal Empire ruled the South Asian region for a significant period during the medieval ages. When the second Mughal emperor Humayun suddenly died in 1556, his death was concealed and a man was dressed up to impersonate him for several days until Humayaun's son, Akbar was coronated. Today, the Internet has democratized information, allowing open access of information to the masses. But government-imposed content restriction has become common, hampering a free and open Internet, as originally envisaged by Tim Berners-Lee and many others.

In November 2015, Facebook, WhatsApp and Viber were temporarily blocked in Bangladesh on security grounds. In October 2015, the Indian government instructed local Internet service providers to block at least 240 sites said to be offering pirated content. The Singapore government has recently announced that in order to strengthen national security, public servants in Singapore will be blocked from accessing the Internet on work computers from May 2017. Taiwan has recently proposed an amendment to their copyright protection law that will facilitate strict blocking of copyright infringing websites. The Internet is increasingly becoming a mechanism of control and governments have gone from simply censoring the web to using it to exercise political power, like in the case of the Turkish coup in July 2016. At the conference, I delivered a presentation on the perspectives and challenges of content filtering for mobile broadband operators.

Content restriction was only one of the many current topics discussed at the 9-day SANOG28. Sessions focused on network security, traffic engineering, the Internet of Things, IP routing and switching, cybercrime prevention and IPv6 deployment.

A session from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) reported on its latest alert - "Fake Pokémon Go Apps Warning". Pokémon Go, a location-based augmented reality game developed for iOS and Android devices, has been enjoying record-breaking success all over the world since its launch in July 2016. However, fake versions of this game has already emerged, which is capable of performing malicious activity on a user's device, like giving full access of the victim's device to the attacker. Countermeasures that CERT-In has suggested include: avoid downloading applications from untrusted sources; careful reading of the apps' terms and conditions before installing; running a full system scan of the device with mobile security solution/anti-virus software; avoid using unsecured/unknown Wi-Fi networks; and performing regular backup of device's data.

Governance was another key topic at the conference. A Canadian speaker highlighted good governance as a prerequisite for the success of any organization, including network operators, and emphasized the splitting of the technical domain from managerial tracks. This is becoming an increasingly common trend in the Silicon Valley, based on the principle that engineering and managerial skills are very different and they should be able to progress independently.

A critical issue for the Internet community, including for SANOG, is the IANA stewardship transition. Historically, control of key Internet resources (IP address, protocol, top-level domain) have been governed by the U.S. government, which is gradually going to be handed over to a global multi-stakeholder community. In the conference's keynote speech, Paul Wilson, Director General of APNIC, gave an update on the status of this transition and emphasized why it is important that we participate in this process.

SANOG is a non-profit forum for network operators in South Asia, committed to making the Internet available for all South Asians and collaboratively addressing the challenges of the Internet. The next meeting - SANOG29 - will be in Islamabad, Pakistan in January 2017.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Internet Society.