Lecture: Cyber Security: Intra-national Cooperation in Cross-Roads

LECTURE in the GGS Teaching Assistantship Programme 2018:

Nourhan Kassem: Cyber Security: Intra-national Cooperation in Cross-Roads

(no regisration needed)

ABSTRACT

As a problematic concept not only in social science but in information technology sciences, cyber security has been a contested semantic space. It encompasses theoretical controversies on the level of definition, and the domain till which our practical policies should extend as well. If cyber could be easily determined as related to internet and networking, the counterpart from which we seek security remains constituting a blurring area. Cyber security includes fostering protection of information systems from electronic threats that takes different shapes. It could start from a simple attack like vandalism and escalate into espionage, terrorism and warfare.

In this lecture, I am going to present different definitions of the concept of cyber security and some of its variant threats. Then I am going to move to deliberate on the different efforts done to face such hazards and how it evolved from being a challenge on the nation-state level to the international one where it required the collaboration of many international agents’ efforts to face. In this respect, it is important to revisit one of the intra-national organization efforts; i.e. NATO and how the lack of coherent and cohesive policies on the national level intensifies such threats and hinders any progressive efforts on the intra/international efforts. This presentation will conclude with an open-end to state the feasibility of some proposed policies such as a global cyberspace treaty, and/or alternatives to Cyber Warfare: Deterrence and Assurance.