Resilience by Design and Resilience Embedded. Achieving Proactive Cyber Defense

Long gone are the years when cyberspace security was only a military concern. Today, it is an issue present everywhere, in civilian and military worlds, in public and private spheres; it is not a coincidence that we speak of a ‘liquid threat’ requiring a transversal defense. This book looks at the problem of protection against cyber threats, a highly topical phenomenon aggravated by the pandemic crisis, as if from a prism that illuminates various facets (such as technology, business, culture) thus endowing it with a multidisciplinary approach: in fact, there are evident references to computer science and engineering, aeronautical science, systems engineering, organizational studies, the themes of complexity, systemic thinking, and corporate culture. The work therefore has an essential technical soul, as well as an organizational one. At the organizational level, then, the cyber threat and its impacts are considered not only for the corporate world, but for any kind of complex organization. The result is a theoretical but also pragmatic monograph, aimed at offering solutions to a very complex problem. For these reasons, it is suitable for managers and executives, experts and professionals, as well as, of course, scholars of the subject in its broadest forms. For the reader who for the first time delves into the meanders of cyberspace, this book is a bit of a journey into the ‘borderless space’ of the so-called ‘fifth domain’, which is threatened by dangerous hackers and therefore requires an adequate protective armour. The reassuring solution, offered by cyber resilience, is a two-faced Janus: it is, on the one hand, resilience by design (the engineering solution) and, on the other hand, resilience embedded (the organizational solution). And like the mythological Janus, it looks simultaneously to the past (the preliminary design) and to the future (proactive defense), aiming at a new beginning, at a more mature and conscious era of security.