Analysing trends and success factors of international cybersecurity capacity-building initiatives

Conference item

The global community has been engaged extensively in assessing and addressing gaps in cybersecurity commitments and capabilities across nations and regions. As a result, a significant number of Cybersecurity Capacity Building (CCB) initiatives were launched to overcome cyber-risks and realise digital dividends. However, these efforts are facing various challenges such as lack of strategy, and duplication. Although extensive research has been carried out on CCB, no single study exists which focuses on analysing CCB initiatives. This gap presents an opportunity for investigating current trends in CCB efforts and identifying the principles for successful CCB initiatives. In this paper, we aim to bridge this gap by collecting and analysing 165 publicly available initiatives. We classify the initiatives based on Oxford’s widely accepted Cybersecurity Capacity Maturity Model (CMM) and perform a descriptive statistical analysis. We further reflect on these initiatives, drawing on well-established success factors from the literature of capacity-building. Towards this end, we also conduct qualitative analysis based on CMM reports for two countries which have experienced socio-economic challenges, Mexico and Brazil, to understand which factors are essential in successful CCB initiatives. We conclude the paper with some interesting results on regional trends, key players, and ingredients of success factors.

Authors: Hameed, F; Agrafiotis, I; Weisser, C; Goldsmith, M; Creese, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: International Academy, Research and Industry Association
• Host title: Twelfth International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (SECURWARE 2018)
• Journal: Twelfth International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (SECURWARE 2018)
• Publication date: 2018-09-16
• Acceptance date: 2018-07-03
• ISSN: 2162-2116
• Keywords: capacity maturity model; capacity building initiatives; cybersecurity