Abstract
Cyber attacks and incursions have certainly emerged as a national security issue. Globally we are seeing the effects of such attacks not only on the financial domain but also in healthcare, government and critical infrastructure (Masys in Networks and network analysis for defence and security. Springer Publishing, 2014, [19]; Masys in Sensemaking in security. Springer Publishing, 2021a, [24]). Understanding the extent of the impact of cyber incursions and attacks requires understanding the systemic cyber risks ‘…of risks spreading across interdependent systems’ (Welburn et al., in Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 2021, [39]). The World Economic Forum (2016) [36] defines Systemic cyber risk as ‘…the risk that a cyber event (attack(s) or other adverse event(s)) at an individual component of a critical infrastructure ecosystem will cause significant delay, denial, breakdown, disruption or loss, such that services are impacted not only in the originating component but consequences also cascade into related (logically and/or geographically) ecosystem components, resulting in significant adverse effects to public health or safety, economic security or national security’. Lucas et al. (Advanced Theory and Simulations, vol 1, 2018, [15]) argues that ‘…systemic risk refers to a potential collapse of a system of potentially global importance and criticality to services that humans urgently need. This dimension of a large potential threat within a complex web of interacting elements distinguishes systemic from other types of risk’. As such traditional risk management approaches are not sufficient for dealing with them IRGC (Guidelines for the governance of systemic risks. International Risk Governance Center, Lausanne, p 5, 2018, [9]). This chapter explores systemic risk across the cyber landscape through the non-traditional security lens (Masys in Handbook of security science. Springer, 2021b, [25]) and presents applications of systems thinking, scenario planning and High Reliability Security Organizations to support systemic risk awareness and management.
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https://www.cisa.gov/systemic-cyber-risk-reduction.
COVID-19 has confirmed the global vulnerabilities that were repeatedly identified in high-level reports, commissions, and intelligence assessments on pandemic threats for nearly two decades prior to this pandemic. COVID-19 has underscored several truths about pandemics and revealed important shortcomings in current global and national capacities to prepare for, detect, and respond to them.
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Masys, A. (2022). Examining Systemic Risk in the Cyber Landscape. In: Farhadi, A., Sanders, R.P., Masys, A. (eds) The Great Power Competition Volume 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04586-8_4
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