ABSTRACT
Cybersecurity remains a puzzle. While human societies are in the midst of a Digital Revolution that is proving as transformative and disruptive as the two Industrial Revolutions that preceded it, the complex problem of how to safeguard new emerging techno-social assemblages against a broad range of manufactured online risks proves extremely challenging. This chapter proposes to adopt an ecological approach compatible with Norbert Elias’ concept of figuration to analyze the cybersecurity ecosystem and its interdependencies. This approach breaks down the ecosystem into three discrete but interconnected communities that each display very different goals, capacities and rationalities: the industrial, criminal and security communities. These communities comprise organizational actors that range from multinational corporations to criminal networks, public law enforcement organizations and NGOs. The interactions within each community and between communities mainly belong to one of the three following categories: competitive, predatory and cooperative interactions. The application of these ecological concepts to emerging techno-social assemblages can help us identify intervention and regulatory strategies to address the growing cybercrime problem.
