Foresight of cyber security threat drivers and affecting technologies
ISSN: 1463-6689
Article publication date: 23 August 2018
Issue publication date: 30 October 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The cyber security industry emerged rapidly in recent years due to mounting cyber threats and increasing cyber hacking activities. Research on emerging technologies emphasizes the risks and sometimes neglects to address the potential positive contribution to cyber security. The purpose of this study is to conduct a relatively balanced long-term foresight study to elicit major significant threat drivers and to identify emerging technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on defense and attack capabilities in cyber security.
Design/methodology/approach
The main instruments used in this study were horizon scanning and an online survey among subject-matter experts that assessed emerging threats and the potential impact of several emerging technologies on cyber defense capabilities and cyber attack capabilities.
Findings
An expert survey shows that cyber resilience, homomorphic encryption and blockchain may be considered as technologies contributing mainly to defense capabilities. On the other hand, Internet of Things, biohacking and human machine interface (HMI) and autonomous technologies add mainly to attack capabilities. In the middle, we find autonomous technologies, quantum computing and artificial intelligence that contribute to defense, as well as to attack capabilities, with roughly similar impact on both.
Originality/value
This study adds to the current research a balanced long-term view and experts’ assessment of negative and positive impacts of emerging technologies, including their time to maturity and consensus levels. Two new Likert scale measures were applied to measure the potential impact of emerging technologies on cyber security, thus enabling the classification of the results into four groups (net positive, net negative, positive-positive and negative-negative).
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was sponsored by the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center at Tel Aviv University.
Citation
Raban, Y. and Hauptman, A. (2018), "Foresight of cyber security threat drivers and affecting technologies", Foresight, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 353-363. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-02-2018-0020
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited