Attaining meaningful cybersecurity presents a broad societal challenge. Its complexity and the range of systems and sectors in which it is needed mean that successful approaches are necessarily multifaceted. Moreover, cybersecurity is a dynamic process involving human attackers who continue to adapt. Despite considerable investments of resources and intellect, cybersecurity continues to poses serious challenges to national security, business performance, and public well-being. Modern developments in computation, storage and connectivity to the Internet have brought into even sharper focus the need for a better understanding of the overall security of the systems we depend on. Foundational Cybersecurity Research focuses on foundational research strategies for organizing people, technologies, and governance. These strategies seek to ensure the sustained support needed to create an agile, effective research community, with collaborative links across disciplines and between research and practice. This report is aimed primarily at the cybersecurity research community, but takes a broad view that efforts to improve foundational cybersecurity research will need to include many disciplines working together to achieve common goals.

The prevalence of cyber-dependent crimes and illegal activities that can only be performed using a computer, computer networks, or other forms of information communication technology has significantly increased during the last two decades in the USA and worldwide. As a result, cybersecurity scholars and practitioners have developed various tools and policies to reduce individuals' and organizations' risk of experiencing cyber-dependent crimes. However, although cybersecurity research and tools production efforts have increased substantially, very little attention has been devoted to identifying potential comprehensive interventions that consider both human and technical aspects of the local ecology within which these crimes emerge and persist. Moreover, it appears that rigorous scientific assessments of these technologies and policies "in the wild" have been dismissed in the process of encouraging innovation and marketing. Consequently, governmental organizations, public, and private companies allocate a considerable portion of their operations budgets to protecting their computer and internet infrastructures without understanding the effectiveness of various tools and policies in reducing the myriad of risks they face. Unfortunately, this practice may complicate organizational workflows and increase costs for government entities, businesses, and consumers. The success of the evidence-based approach in improving performance in a wide range of professions (for example, medicine, policing, and education) leads us to believe that an evidence-based cybersecurity approach is critical for improving cybersecurity efforts. This book seeks to explain the foundation of the evidence-based cybersecurity approach, review its relevance in the context of existing security tools and policies, and provide concrete examples of how adopting this approach could improve cybersecurity operations and guide policymakers' decision-making process. The evidence-based cybersecurity approach explained aims to support security professionals', policymakers', and individual computer users' decision-making regarding the deployment of security policies and tools by calling for rigorous scientific investigations of the effectiveness of these policies and mechanisms in achieving their goals to protect critical assets. This book illustrates how this approach provides an ideal framework for conceptualizing an interdisciplinary problem like cybersecurity because it stresses moving beyond decision-makers' political, financial, social, and personal experience backgrounds when adopting cybersecurity tools and policies. This approach is also a model in which policy decisions are made based on scientific research findings.

If you’re involved in cybersecurity as a software developer, forensic investigator, or network administrator, this practical guide shows you how to apply the scientific method when assessing techniques for protecting your information systems. You’ll learn how to conduct scientific experiments on everyday tools and procedures, whether you’re evaluating corporate security systems, testing your own security product, or looking for bugs in a mobile game. Once author Josiah Dykstra gets you up to speed on the scientific method, he helps you focus on standalone, domain-specific topics, such as cryptography, malware analysis, and system security engineering. The latter chapters include practical case studies that demonstrate how to use available tools to conduct domain-specific scientific experiments. Learn the steps necessary to conduct scientific experiments in cybersecurity Explore fuzzing to test how your software handles various inputs Measure the performance of the Snort intrusion detection system Locate malicious “needles in a haystack” in your network and IT environment Evaluate cryptography design and application in IoT products Conduct an experiment to identify relationships between similar malware binaries Understand system-level security requirements for enterprise networks and web services

In recent years, interest and progress in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have boomed, with new applications vigorously pursued across many sectors. At the same time, the computing and communications technologies on which we have come to rely present serious security concerns: cyberattacks have escalated in number, frequency, and impact, drawing increased attention to the vulnerabilities of cyber systems and the need to increase their security. In the face of this changing landscape, there is significant concern and interest among policymakers, security practitioners, technologists, researchers, and the public about the potential implications of AI and ML for cybersecurity. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop on March 12-13, 2019 to discuss and explore these concerns. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

We depend on information and information technology (IT) to make many of our day-to-day tasks easier and more convenient. Computers play key roles in transportation, health care, banking, and energy. Businesses use IT for payroll and accounting, inventory and sales, and research and development. Modern military forces use weapons that are increasingly coordinated through computer-based networks. Cybersecurity is vital to protecting all of these functions. Cyberspace is vulnerable to a broad spectrum of hackers, criminals, terrorists, and state actors. Working in cyberspace, these malevolent actors can steal money, intellectual property, or classified information; impersonate law-abiding parties for their own purposes; damage important data; or deny the availability of normally accessible services. Cybersecurity issues arise because of three factors taken together - the presence of malevolent actors in cyberspace, societal reliance on IT for many important functions, and the presence of vulnerabilities in IT systems. What steps can policy makers take to protect our government, businesses, and the public from those would take advantage of system vulnerabilities? At the Nexus of Cybersecurity and Public Policy offers a wealth of information on practical measures, technical and nontechnical challenges, and potential policy responses. According to this report, cybersecurity is a never-ending battle; threats will evolve as adversaries adopt new tools and techniques to compromise security. Cybersecurity is therefore an ongoing process that needs to evolve as new threats are identified. At the Nexus of Cybersecurity and Public Policy is a call for action to make cybersecurity a public safety priority. For a number of years, the cybersecurity issue has received increasing public attention; however, most policy focus has been on the short-term costs of improving systems. In its explanation of the fundamentals of cybersecurity and the discussion of potential policy responses, this book will be a resource for policy makers, cybersecurity and IT professionals, and anyone who wants to understand threats to cyberspace.

This Oxford Handbook is the definitive volume on the state of international security and the academic field of security studies. It provides a tour of the most innovative and exciting news areas of research as well as major developments in established lines of inquiry. It presents a comprehensive portrait of an exciting field, with a distinctively forward-looking theme, focusing on the question: what does it mean to think about the future of international security? The key assumption underpinning this volume is that all scholarly claims about international security, both normative and positive, have implications for the future. By examining international security to extract implications for the future, the volume provides clarity about the real meaning and practical implications for those involved in this field. Yet, contributions to this volume are not exclusively forecasts or prognostications, and the volume reflects the fact that, within the field of security studies, there are diverse views on how to think about the future. Readers will find in this volume some of the most influential mainstream (positivist) voices in the field of international security as well as some of the best known scholars representing various branches of critical thinking about security. The topics covered in the Handbook range from conventional international security themes such as arms control, alliances and Great Power politics, to "new security" issues such as global health, the roles of non-state actors, cyber-security, and the power of visual representations in international security. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smith of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by a distinguished pair of specialists in their respective fields. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of the original Reus-Smit and Snidal The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by a pair of scholars drawn from alternative perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions.

Exploring the negative social impact of cyber-attacks, this book takes a closer look at the challenges faced by both the public and private sectors of the financial industry. It is widely known amongst senior executives in both sectors that cybercrime poses a real threat, however effective collaboration between individual financial institutions and the public sector into detecting, monitoring and responding to cyber-attacks remains limited. Addressing this problem, the authors present the results from a series of interviews with cybersecurity professionals based in Canada in order to better understand the potential risks and threats that financial institutions are facing in the digital age. Offering policy recommendations for improving cybersecurity protection measures within financial institutions, and enhancing the sharing of information between the public and private sector, this book is a timely and invaluable read for those researching financial services, cybercrime and risk management, as well as finance professionals interested in cybersecurity.