Governance Model of a Cybersecurity Network

Abstract

Proliferating cyber threats, both in terms of diversity and intensity, require a timely development and implementation of effective solutions, which is within the powers of very few organisations, and actually of very few countries. The European Union sees collaboration and the establishment of competence networks as indispensable for securing its digital economy, infrastructures, society, and democracy, and preserving its competitive advantages. Four pilot projects were launched in 2019 within the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme aiming at establishing and operating a pilot for a Cybersecurity Competence Network to develop and implement common cybersecurity research and innovation roadmap, to develop and validate an appropriate governance model of the network.The research team of one of the pilots, ECHO, conducted a comprehensive study to identify governance needs, priorities, and models, analysing for that purpose norms, existing networks, and academic sources and interviewing key stakeholders. This paper presents the results of the review of the academic literature conducted to identify and prioritise requirements and support the design of a governance model of a network in the field of cybersecurity. First, it outlines different approaches to creating and governing a Collaborative Networked Organisation (CNO). Then, the authors analyse a variety of CNO governance models and identify possible arrangements for the establishment of collaboration. Further, they examine the collaborative and absorptive capacity of networked organisations and discuss the issues of organisational resilience and value systems alignment in CNOs, with a focus on trust relationships and trustworthiness as one of the crucial factors of success. The paper concludes by summarising the key features of CNO governance models and elaborating on how the identified best practices can be applied in the development of a governance model of a cybersecurity network.