Breaking the CyberSecurity Dilemma Aligning Secu

Authors: Myriam Dunn Cavelty

Publish Date: 2014/04/30

Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 701-715

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Abstract

Current approaches to cybersecurity are not working Rather than producing more security we seem to be facing less and less The reason for this is a multidimensional and multifaceted security dilemma that extends beyond the state and its interaction with other states It will be shown how the focus on the state and “its” security crowds out consideration for the security of the individual citizen with detrimental effects on the security of the whole system The threat arising from cyberspace to national security is presented as possible disruption to a specific way of life one building on information technologies and critical functions of infrastructures with relatively little consideration for humans directly This nonfocus on people makes it easier for state actors to militarize cybersecurity and reassert their power in cyberspace thereby overriding the different security needs of human beings in that space Paradoxically the use of cyberspace as a tool for national security both in the dimension of war fighting and the dimension of masssurveillance has detrimental effects on the level of cybersecurity globally A solution out of this dilemma is a cybersecurity policy that is decidedly antivulnerability and at the same time based on strong considerations for privacy and data protection Such a security would have to be informed by an ethics of the infosphere that is based on the dignity of information related to human beings

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