Seybold Report ISSN: 1533-9211
W.R, Wan Rosli1, Z, Hamin2, S., Kamaruddin3 and A.R., Abd. Rani4
1, 2, 4Faculty of Law, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, 40450 Selangor, Malaysia.
3Faculty of Management and Economics, Sultan Idris Education University, Tanjung Malim, Perak, Malaysia.
Email: *1rosalili@uitm.edu.my; 2zaiton303@uitm.edu.my; 3 saslina@fpe.edu.my; 4ridhwanrani@uitm.edu.my
Vol 17, No 10 ( 2022 ) | Licensing: CC 4.0 | Pg no:2303-2312 | Published on: 31-10-2022
Abstract
Of late, cyber or virtual attacks by non-state and state-backed actors against government websites, public and private networks, confidential networks, and individuals have become more and more rampant. Such phenomena highlight the risk of being connected to the Internet, primarily where the environment of cyberspace facilitates anonymity. The emergence of cyber espionage to spy on the government, public, or private sector acts as a visible threat to national security. The prevalent theoretical approaches adopted to understand cyber espionage is the Risk Society Theory (RST) and the Cyber-Securitisation Theory (CST). However, on their own, these two theories are deficient in that RST relies on the risks and insecurities that come with modernisation, and CST only focuses on the transformation of a domain into a matter of national security. Given these problems, this paper aims at examining each model and expanding and integrating the RST and CST, which would mitigate the understanding of cyber espionage and modalities to prevent such crime. This paper adopts a qualitative methodology, of which the primary data is generated from semi-structured interviews with relevant respondents. The data triangulation is obtained from experts at two relevant ministries. The secondary data are the relevant cyber law, the Penal Code, books, academic journals, online databases and library-based sources. The findings suggest that the risks of cyber espionage are often manufactured by the victims, who may be able to manage and mitigate such risks if integrated with the cyber securitisation model. The findings have significant implications not only for the stakeholders including the policymakers and law enforcement but also for individual responsibility of corporate entities and computer users to protect themselves against such crime as they are becoming new actors or new sites of authority in the information era.
Keywords:
Cyber Espionage, Risk, Risk Society Theory, Cyber Securitisation Theory, Cybersecurity