Cyber Security Policy Guidebook

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Introduction

1.1 What Is Cyber Security?

Cyber security refers generally to the ability to control access to networked systems and the information they contain. Where cyber security controls are effective, cyberspace is considered a reliable, resilient, and trustworthy digital infrastructure. Where cyber security controls are absent, incomplete, or poorly designed, cyberspace is considered the wild west of the digital age. Even those who work in the security profession will have a different view of cyber security depending on the aspects of cyberspace with which they personally interact. Whether a system is a physical facility or a collection of cyberspace components, the role of a security professional assigned to that system is to plan for potential attack and prepare for its consequences.

Although the word “cyber” is mainstream vernacular, to what exactly it refers is elusive. Once a term of science fiction based on the then-emerging field of computer control and communication known as cybernetics, it now refers generally to electronic automation (Safire 1994). The corresponding term “cyberspace” has definitions that range from conceptual to technical, and has been claimed by some to be a fourth domain, where land, sea, and air are the first three (Kuehl 2009). There are numerous definitions of cyberspace and cyber security scattered throughout literature. Our intent is not to engage in a debate on semantics, so we do not include these definitions. Moreover, such debates are ...