Driving Cybersecurity Policy Insights From Information on the Internet

Cybersecurity policy analytics quantitatively evaluates the effectiveness of cybersecurity protection measures consisting of both technical and managerial countermeasures and is inherently interdisciplinary work, drawing on the concepts and methods from economics, business, social science, and law.

The battle between cybersecurity protection and perpetration will never be settled on account of human beings’ intrinsic motivation for interconnection in modern society. First, information technology-enabled interconnections bridge the existing system and network boundaries across countries, organizations, and people. The rapid penetration of interconnection results in ever-emerging vulnerabilities embedded in the creation of new technologies and new uses of existing technologies. Second, cybersecurity threats are a by-product of freedom and prosperity empowered by digital transformation, as they manifest themselves in the routine activities of everyday life. The extensive digital presence within social activities and personal assets substantially increases the opportunity of the convergence of suitable targets and motivated perpetrators in space and time. Third, the dual-use nature of cybersecurity technology further catalyzes the arms race between techniques adopted for civilian and commercial purposes and techniques exploited for security violation,1 with examples found in the evolution of technologies for cryptography, remote access control, and resilience testing. The social, economic, and technological roots of cybersecurity determine that effective national cybersecurity policies are as important as technical countermeasures in tackling cybersecurity threats.