Abstract

This special issue gathers together a selection of papers presented by international experts during a workshop entitled ‘Ethics of Cyber-Conflicts’, which was devoted to fostering interdisciplinary debate on the ethical and legal problems and the regulatory gap concerning cyber conflicts. The workshop was held in 2013 at the Centro Alti Studi Difesa in Rome under the auspices of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (NATO CCD COE). This NATO-accredited international military organisation that has always placed a high value on an interdisciplinary approach to cyber defence, uniting as it does perspectives from technical, policy, legal, and strategic domains. The Centre’s mission is to enhance capability, cooperation, and information-sharing between NATO, its member states, and partner countries in the area of cyber defence by virtue of research, education, and consultation. The workshop was one of the projects supported by the Centre to achieve this mission. Readers may already be familiar with the term ‘cyber conflict’, which is understood as any use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that may have disruptive or destructive consequences. Cyber conflicts are an umbrella phenomenon encompassing several instances ranging from cyber warfare and hacktivism to cyber crime and cyber terrorism. As contemporary societies grow dependent from ICTs, any form of conflict that uses these technologies, both as a means and as a target, poses serious threats to their stability, security, and welfare. As recently reported by the Financial Times, Bthe ultimate impact [of cyber-conflicts] could be as much as $3 trillion in lost productivity and growth^. Furthermore, should cyber conflicts propagate without an adequate response then contemporary societies may risk a cyber backlash in the shape of a deceleration to the digitization process imposed by governments and international institutions in order to prevent this Philos. Technol. (2015) 28:333–338 DOI 10.1007/s13347-015-0197-8

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