Personalised Deterrence of Cyber Aggression

Abstract

The continuing occurrence of state-sponsored cyber attacks against liberal democracies, including private sector and civil society targets, shows that deterrence efforts have been less than successful. Elisabeth Braw and Gary Brown argue that adversary governments’ practice of hiding behind proxies makes response and thus deterrence extraordinarily difficult. As a deterrence strategy adding to the existing deterrence directed against hostile actors, they propose ‘personalised deterrence’, with governments of targeted countries communicating directly to individual cyber attackers their intent to hold them personally responsible through denial of benefits and use of criminal law.