Cyber Hygiene Can Support Cyber Peace

Too often, the international community is focused on responding to the latest cyber attack, disinformation campaign, or escalation. From ranswomware afflicting the City of Baltimore to state-sponsored campaigns targeting electrical grids in Ukraine and the United States, we seem to have relatively little bandwidth left over for asking the big questions, including: what is the best we can hope for in terms of “peace” on the Internet, and how might we be able to get there? More broadly, what are the long-term implications for such pervasive cyber insecurity across the public and private sectors, and how might they be curtailed? This Article dives into the history and evolution of cyber peace, including an analysis of lessons from analogous contexts such as U.N. peacekeeping efforts and the Digital Blue Helmets Initiative. These findings are then contextualized by reviewing recent efforts aimed at promoting cyber peace, including the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, the Christ Church Call, U.N.-centered norm building efforts such as through the Group of Government Experts, Global Commission on Cyber Stability, and the Digital Geneva Convention. These efforts are conceptualized within a polycentric framework, emphasizing practical implications for practitioners and policymakers.

The encompassing trend of digitalisation and widespread dependencies on IT systems triggers adjustments also in the military forces. Besides necessary enhancements of IT security and defensive measures for cyberspace, a growing number of states are establishing offensive military capabilities for this domain. Looking at historical developments and transformations due to advancements in military technologies, the chapter discusses the political progress made and tools developed since. Both of these have contributed to handling challenges and confining threats to international security. With this background, the text assesses a possible application of these efforts to developments concerning cyberspace, as well as obstacles that need to be tackled for it to be successful. The chapter points out political advancements already in progress, the role of social initiatives, such as the cyber peace campaign of the Forum of Computer Scientists for Peace and Societal Responsibility (FifF), as well as potential consequences of the rising probability of cyber war as opposed to the prospects of cyber peace.

Technological and scientific progress, especially the rapid development in information technology (IT), plays a crucial role regarding questions of peace and security. This textbook addresses the significance, potentials and challenges of IT for peace and security. For this purpose, the book offers an introduction to peace, conflict, and security research, thereby focusing on natural science, technical and computer science perspectives. In the following, it sheds light on fundamentals (e.g. IT in peace, conflict and security, naturalscience/ technical peace research), cyber conflicts and war (e.g. information warfare, cyber espionage, cyber defence, Darknet), cyber peace (e.g. dual-use, technology assessment, confidence and security building measures), cyber arms control (e.g. arms control in the cyberspace, unmanned systems, verification), cyber attribution and infrastructures (e.g. attribution of cyber attacks, resilient infrastructures, secure critical information infrastructures), culture and interaction (e.g. safety and security, cultural violence, social media), before an outlook is given. This chapter provides an overview of all chapters in this book.