Sustainable Cybersecurity? Rethinking Approaches to Protecting Energy Infrastructure in the European High North
Sandra Cassotta and Roman Sidortsov
In this paper, the authors argue for rethinking the existing cybersecurity governance structures and propose an approach that connects cybersecurity and environmental governance. Rapidly increasing digitization has positively contributed to economic and social development and helped increasing environmental protection. However, it also made socio-technical systems, energy systems, for example, and ecosystems more vulnerable to cyber-threats. Certain conditions such as remoteness, seasonal darkness, and severe climate that is becoming less predictable due to global climate change – the kind of conditions present in the Arctic European High North (EHN) – amplify the impacts of a potential cyber-attack. Although these exceptionally critical infrastructure conditions (ECIC), pose inordinate and immense governance challenges, the existing national and international legal frameworks treat them in a fragmented manner. The authors draw upon environmental law principles and outline the contours of a coherent and cohesive risk-based, pluralistic, and polycentric legal framework that they see as a critical part of the new ECIC governance regime.
This paper is a deliverable of the ECoHuCy Research Project supported by NordForsk – organization under the Nordic Council of Ministers. ISDP is one of four other Project Partners behind this consortium grant. Led by Sandra Cassotta, ISDP is administering “Working Package Four” on Climate Change, Environmental Threats and Cybersecurity.
Related Publications
-
Navigating Uncertainty: How Multinationals Can Hedge Against Rising Tensions in the Taiwan Straits
When geopolitical tensions in critical regions can reshape the landscape of global trade overnight, multinationals are finding it increasingly necessary to adopt sophisticated risk management strategies. The Taiwan Straits, a […]
-
EU-Thailand FTA Negotiations: IUU Fishing and Human Rights Remain Obstacles
Thailand’s fishing industry, which at its height saw as many as 200,000 migrant workers from neighboring Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia caught in a brutal system of abuse, withered global criticism […]
-
Trade, Connectivity and Supply Chains in EU-India Relations
In the decade and a half since 2007 when the EU and India first started their FTA negotiations, the world economic order has undergone a sea change. During that period, […]
-
ISDP Annual Report 2023
ISDP’s Annual Report for the year 2023. We look back on 2023, a year in which tensions and conflicts captured the strategic space in ISDP’s focus areas, making headlines around […]
-
Indo-Pacific Security in 2030-35: Links in the Chain
In recent years, events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have brought global supply chains squarely under the spotlight. The economic impact of these disruptive events exposed the […]