The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Always in control? Sovereign states in cyberspace

For well over twenty years, we have witnessed an intriguing debate about the nature of cyberspace. Used for everything from communication to commerce, it has transformed the way individuals and societies live. But how has it impacted the sovereignty of states? An initial wave of scholars argued that it had dramatically diminished centralised control by states, helped by a tidal wave of globalisation and freedom. These libertarian claims were considerable. More recently, a new wave of writing has argued that states have begun to recover control in cyberspace, focusing on either the police work of authoritarian regimes or the revelations of Edward Snowden. Both claims were wide of the mark. By contrast, this article argues that we have often misunderstood the materiality of cyberspace and its consequences for control. It not only challenges the libertarian narrative of freedom, it suggests that the anarchic imaginary of the Internet as a ‘Wild West’ was deliberately promoted by states in order to distract from the reality. The Internet, like previous forms of electronic connectivity, consists mostly of a physical infrastructure located in specific geographies and jurisdictions. Rather than circumscribing sovereignty, it has offered centralised authority new ways of conducting statecraft. Indeed, the Internet, high-speed computing, and voice recognition were all the result of security research by a single information hegemon and therefore it has always been in control

Privacy matters:issues within mechatronics

As mechatronic devices and components become increasingly integrated with and within wider systems concepts such as Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, designer engineers are faced with new sets of challenges in areas such as privacy. The paper looks at the current, and potential future, of privacy legislation, regulations and standards and considers how these are likely to impact on the way in which mechatronics is perceived and viewed. The emphasis is not therefore on technical issues, though these are brought into consideration where relevant, but on the soft, or human centred, issues associated with achieving user privacy

Hacker Combat: A Competitive Sport from Programmatic Dueling & Cyberwarfare

The history of humanhood has included competitive activities of many different forms. Sports have offered many benefits beyond that of entertainment. At the time of this article, there exists not a competitive ecosystem for cyber security beyond that of conventional capture the flag competitions, and the like. This paper introduces a competitive framework with a foundation on computer science, and hacking. This proposed competitive landscape encompasses the ideas underlying information security, software engineering, and cyber warfare. We also demonstrate the opportunity to rank, score, & categorize actionable skill levels into tiers of capability. Physiological metrics are analyzed from participants during gameplay. These analyses provide support regarding the intricacies required for competitive play, and analysis of play. We use these intricacies to build a case for an organized competitive ecosystem. Using previous player behavior from gameplay, we also demonstrate the generation of an artificial agent purposed with gameplay at a competitive level

Simulation for Cybersecurity: State of the Art and Future Directions

In this article, we provide an introduction to simulation for cybersecurity and focus on three themes: (1) an overview of the cybersecurity domain; (2) a summary of notable simulation research efforts for cybersecurity; and (3) a proposed way forward on how simulations could broaden cybersecurity efforts. The overview of cybersecurity provides readers with a foundational perspective of cybersecurity in the light of targets, threats, and preventive measures. The simulation research section details the current role that simulation plays in cybersecurity, which mainly falls on representative environment building; test, evaluate, and explore; training and exercises; risk analysis and assessment; and humans in cybersecurity research. The proposed way forward section posits that the advancement of collecting and accessing sociotechnological data to inform models, the creation of new theoretical constructs, and the integration and improvement of behavioral models are needed to advance cybersecurity efforts

Understanding digital intelligence and the norms that might govern it

Abstract: This paper describes the nature of digital intelligence and provides context for the material published as a result of the actions of National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. It looks at the dynamic interaction between demands from government and law enforcement for digital intelligence, and at the new possibilities that digital technology has opened up for meeting such demands. The adequacy of previous regimes of legal powers and governance arrangements is seriously challenged just at a time when the objective need for intelligence on the serious threats facing civil society is apparent. This paper suggests areas where it might be possible to derive international norms, regarded as promoting standards of accepted behaviour that might gain widespread, if not universal, international acceptance, for the safe practice of digital intelligence