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Tag: Cyberspace

Lucie Kadlecová | Cyber Security in Europe and Beyond | Intelligence & Interview N.30 | Roman Kolodii

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In the modern digital era, the importance of cybersecurity cannot be stressed enough. As recent developments have shown, the security of personal data and trade secrets, the protection of critical information infrastructure, even the integrity of democratic processes as such all depend on the smooth functioning of cybersecurity mechanisms. This especially holds true in the current Covid-19 reality, where increased digital consumption and massive readjustments of ways of life and work through cyber-technologies all multiply the possibilities for major digital assets to be compromised. In popular imagination, however, cybersecurity is still closely connected to the technicalities of the field, the so-called hard cybersecurity, while the soft – i.e. legal, political, socioeconomic, cultural, and ethical – dimensions of it remain yet understudied. To narrow this gap, we have invited to our interview series Lucie Kadlecová, an expert in cybersecurity policy and governance. She is a PhD candidate at Institute of International Studies, Charles University (Czechia) and a senior associate in strategy and threat intelligence for Estonian cybersecurity company CybExer Technologies. Both Czechia and Estonia are well-known hubs of cyber-technological expertise, so Lucie Kadlecová’s experience in academia and industry in both countries can help highlight the key trends in this field from the insider’s perspective. In our interview, we discuss cyber security strategy of the EU, the role of non-state actors and public-private partnerships in cybersecurity governance, the importance of cyber hygiene and gender equality in the field, as well as the prospects for enhanced cooperation between industry and academia in tackling cybersecurity challenges worldwide. On behalf of the Scuola Filosofica Team, our readers, and myself, Roman Kolodii, Lucie: thank you!


#1 Lucie Kadlecová,[1] how would you like to present yourself to the international readers of Scuola Filosofica?

I suppose I could be described as either a professional with an academic background or as an academic with professional experience, depending on the reader’s point of view. By nature, I am more of a professional who likes hands-on experience. That’s why I am deeply grateful for my previous experience working as a trainee for international organizations such as NATO, and helping to build the then-quickly growing Czech National Cyber Security Centre years ago. At the same time, however, I could see a gap between practice and academia in the “soft topics” of cyber security such as international relations and international law in the Czech Republic as well as around Europe. This feeling encouraged me to pursue my PhD, and to start teaching and publishing about these topics in order to contribute to closing this gap. At the same time, academic experience from King’s College London, Charles University in Prague, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as other interactions in the academic world shaped my way of thinking about cyber security and its “soft” aspects.

Why the absolute cyberwar is taking place – A philosophical analysis of the cyber domain to understand the current strategic competition in the cyberspace

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Would you like to help the scientific research in the field? Are you interested in cyberwar and cyber security? Please, write to the author (scuolafilosofica_at_gmail.com) and ask him for the first draft of the paper!


Abstract

The cyber domain is a set of rules implemented by an appropriate infrastructure. The cyber domain can be subjected to political influence and it can be exploited to reach political objectives quite far from its specific and limited nature. A completely different kind of war is happening inside the cyber domain. It is a war waged inside and outside the cyberspace in order to reach the strategic control of the rules, laws and principles of the domain itself. This means that the cyber domain is different from the other domains: it is the only one in which the human actors can change the laws of the domain itself. This is not a competition that could be conceived as the past wars. This war will not only affect all the citizens connected to the cyberspace, but it will result ultimately in the shape of the cyber domain itself. This is something deeper and much more radical of what we have seen before and this explains why the cyberwar will not take place: it is just happening. It is time to start thinking differently. A philosophical perspective is needed to improve our understanding of the very nature of the cyber domain.