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Cybersecurity governance: a prehistory and its implications

Bradley Fidler (Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA)

Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance

ISSN: 2398-5038

Article publication date: 11 September 2017

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand the emerging challenges of cybersecurity governance by analyzing the internet’s early history.

Design/methodology/approach

Tracing the design and management of early internet and network security technologies in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s.

Findings

The US Department of Defense separated the research and management regimes for networks and network security, with the latter restricted to military networks. As such, the absence of cybersecurity technologies on the early internet was not an oversight, but a necessary compromise. This ordering of networks and security had enduring technological, political and even cultural consequences, which are breaking down today.

Social implications

Political, technological and metaphoric distinctions between networks and security should be challenged; cybersecurity will transform internet governance.

Originality/value

New historical sources and analysis provide a novel perspective on contemporary challenges of cybersecurity governance.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Milton Mueller and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely insightful observations and criticisms – this paper is far stronger as a result of their contributions. The author would also like to thank Arpanet and early internet practitioners, many of whose interviews the author draws on here, for their time and insights. Any remaining errors are the author’s responsibility.

Citation

Fidler, B. (2017), "Cybersecurity governance: a prehistory and its implications", Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, Vol. 19 No. 6, pp. 449-465. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPRG-05-2017-0026

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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