Clear and present danger: Interventive and retaliatory approaches to cyber threats

Organizations, including governments, have been attempting to address cyber threats for years by deploying technologies (e.g., security perimeter defences). These technologies are overarching policies and regulations designed to encourage resilient cybersecurity strategies that safeguard not only data, but also properties and human lives. Implementing these technologies is one thing, but ensuring their effectiveness is another. Lack of effectiveness and inability to satisfy existing government requirements and approaches in dealing with cyber threats and attacks are likely to continue until better approaches are employed. These approaches may emanate from effective regulations, intelligence gathering and sharing, and good security practices to workable alliances and interactions with other communities. This work is proposing approaches based on the premise that cybersecurity strategies must adhere to and be guided by the effectiveness criteria: that is, intervention and retaliatory approaches should be employed and utilized on the basis of their empirically demonstrated effectiveness to combat cyber threats.