As societies, governments, corporations, and individuals become more dependent on the digital environment, so they also become increasingly vulnerable to misuse of that environment. A considerable industry has developed to provide the means with which to make cyberspace more secure, stable, and predictable. Cybersecurity is concerned with the identification, avoidance, management, and mitigation of risk in, or from, cyberspace—the risk of harm and damage that might occur as the result of everything from individual carelessness to organized criminality, to industrial and national security espionage, and, at the extreme end of the scale, to disabling attacks against a country’s critical national infrastructure. But this represents a rather narrow understanding of security and there is much more to cyberspace than vulnerability, risk, and threat. As well as security from financial loss, physical damage, etc., cybersecurity must also be for the maximization of benefit. The Oxford Handbook of Cybersecurity takes a comprehensive and rounded approach to the still evolving topic of cybersecurity: the security of cyberspace is as much technological as it is commercial and strategic; as much international as regional, national, and personal; and as much a matter of hazard and vulnerability as an opportunity for social, economic, and cultural growth.
