Critical Perspectives On Cybersecurity

Critical Perspectives on Cybersecurity offers a new approach to understanding cybersecurity in international relations. As a counterpoint to existing work, which focuses largely on the security of states, private actors, and infrastructure, chapter authors examine how women and communities across the Global South understand "cybersecurity," including what threats and forms of resistance are most important to them. Bringing together contributions from a globally diverse range of authors, Anwar Mhajne and Alexis Henshaw provide a human security perspective on cybersecurity that pays attention to the interplay of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and other social hierarchies, especially regarding cybersecurity in the Global South.

This book presents a compendium of selected game- and decision-theoretic models to achieve and assess the security of critical infrastructures. Given contemporary reports on security incidents of various kinds, we can see a paradigm shift to attacks of an increasingly heterogeneous nature, combining different techniques into what we know as an advanced persistent threat. Security precautions must match these diverse threat patterns in an equally diverse manner; in response, this book provides a wealth of techniques for protection and mitigation. Much traditional security research has a narrow focus on specific attack scenarios or applications, and strives to make an attack “practically impossible.” A more recent approach to security views it as a scenario in which the cost of an attack exceeds the potential reward. This does not rule out the possibility of an attack but minimizes its likelihood to the least possible risk. The book follows this economic definition of security, offering a management scientific view that seeks a balance between security investments and their resulting benefits. It focuses on optimization of resources in light of threats such as terrorism and advanced persistent threats. Drawing on the authors’ experience and inspired by real case studies, the book provides a systematic approach to critical infrastructure security and resilience. Presenting a mixture of theoretical work and practical success stories, the book is chiefly intended for students and practitioners seeking an introduction to game- and decision-theoretic techniques for security. The required mathematical concepts are self-contained, rigorously introduced, and illustrated by case studies. The book also provides software tools that help guide readers in the practical use of the scientific models and computational frameworks.

Until recently, the Arctic was almost impossible for anyone other than indigenous peoples and explorers to traverse. Pervasive Arctic sea ice and harsh climatological conditions meant that the region was deemed incapable of supporting industrial activity or a Western lifestyle. In the last decade, however, that longstanding reality has been dramatically and permanently altered. Receding sea ice, coupled with growing geopolitical disputes over Arctic resources, territory, and transportation channels, has stimulated efforts to exploit newly-open waterways, to identify and extract desirable resources, and to leverage industrial, commercial, and transportation opportunities emerging throughout the region. This book presents papers from the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) Governance for Cyber Security and Resilience in the Arctic. Held in Rovaniemi, Finland, from 27-30 January 2019, the workshop brought together top scholars in cybersecurity risk assessment, governance, and resilience to discuss potential analytical and governing strategies and offer perspectives on how to improve critical Arctic infrastructure against various human and natural threats. The book is organized in three sections according to topical group and plenary discussions at the meeting on: cybersecurity infrastructure and threats, analytical strategies for infrastructure threat absorption and resilience, and legal frameworks and governance options to promote cyber resilience. Summaries and detailed analysis are included within each section as summary chapters in the book. The book provides a background on analytical tools relevant to risk and resilience analytics, including risk assessment, decision analysis, supply chain management and resilience analytics. It will allow government, native and civil society groups, military stakeholders, and civilian practitioners to understand better on how to enhance the Arctic’s resilience against various natural and anthropogenic challenges.

In the twenty-first century, political hostilities have moved largely from the battlefield to cyberspace. Since the Stuxnet virus was uncovered in 2010, built jointly by U.S. and Israeli intelligence to disarm the Iranian nuclear program, attention has been drawn to the real-life damage that such virtual programs can inflict. In this book, a range of experts, from journalists, to lawyers, to government officials, offer their varied opinions on the dawn of cyberwarfare, allowing readers to determine where they stand on this important issue.

In our digital age, online companies such as Google and Amazon are experiencing tremendous growth. The power and influence of these digital companies was demonstrated in September 2017 when Amazon bought the popular organic grocery Whole Foods for a record 13 million dollars. Do companies such as Amazon have too much influence in the digital space? Should they be broken up to allow more competition? In this book, these questions and more are considered by a range of experts in the subject, from legal experts, to CEOs, to corporate players, and journalists.

Basic services such as electricity, transportation, mobile communication and banking are the core infrastructures on which modern societies and economies rest. The seamless functioning of these critical information infrastructures is essential for the social and economic development and well-being of a nation-state. Recent developments in the cyber domain have unearthed a whole new dimension of security attributing to underlying vulnerabilities and interdependencies. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities in the different layers of cyber architecture, serve different objectives of nation-states, terror outfits and criminal syndicates. Despite the best of technology, management as well as security policies and practices at a nation-state's disposal, it is practically impossible to secure all critical elements of infrastructure against all odds. This monograph delves into the various aspects of definitions and understandings of critical information infrastructure and explores the threat actors, perspectives and trends in the emerging practice of critical information infrastructure protection.

In the twenty-first century, political hostilities have moved largely from the battlefield to cyberspace. Since the Stuxnet virus was uncovered in 2010, built jointly by U.S. and Israeli intelligence to disarm the Iranian nuclear program, attention has been drawn to the real-life damage that such virtual programs can inflict. In this book, a range of experts, from journalists, to lawyers, to government officials, offer their varied opinions on the dawn of cyberwarfare, allowing readers to determine where they stand on this important issue.