Legal Aspects of Cybersecurity Artur Appazov

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Legal Solutions and Strategies 
While a viable cybersecurity policy includes a wide range of considerations, legal measures 
play a key role in the prevention and combating of cybercrime. These are required in all 
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Teplinsky, A
MERICAN 
U
NIVERSITY 
B
USINESS 
L
AW 
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EVIEW
, 253-255 (2013). 
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Id. at, 256. 
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Id. at, 256-257. 

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areas, including criminalization, procedural powers, jurisdiction, international cooperation, 
and internet service provider responsibility and liability. In particular, at the national level, 
cybercrime laws most often concern criminalization – establishing specialized offences for 
core cybercrime acts. Countries increasingly recognize the need, however, for legislation in 
other areas.
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The technological developments associated with cybersecurity and cybercrime mean that – 
while traditional laws can be applied to some extent – legislation must also grapple with 
new concepts and objects, such as intangible ‘computer data,’ not traditionally addressed 
by law. In many states, laws on technical developments date back to the 19th century. 
These laws were, and to a great extent, still are, focused on physical objects – around which 
the daily life of industrial society revolved. For this reason, many traditional general laws 
do not take into account the particularities of information and information technology that 
are associated with cybercrime and crimes generating electronic evidence. These acts are 
largely characterized by new intangible objects, such as data or information.
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While criminal law is often perceived as being most relevant when it comes to cybercrime, 
the legal responses to wider concerns of cybersecurity also include the use of other 
branches of law, such as civil law and administrative law. Further divisions within these 
legal regimes include substantive and procedural law, as well as regulatory and 
constitutional, or rights-based, laws. In many legal systems, each of these regimes are 
characterized by specific aims, institutions, and safeguards. Cybercrime laws are most 
usually found within the areas of substantive and procedural criminal law. However, a 
number of other areas of law are also important.
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The matter of criminalization of undesirable conduct in the internet has a two-fold effect: 
(i) creation of the legal basis for retributive suppression of the conduct, and (ii) creation of 
a climate of social unacceptability of cybercrime, de-romanticizing and stigmatizing such 
conduct. Those who use internet to commit crimes grew up with and were socialized by a 
climate in which the predominating mode of unlawful activity was real-world crime, in its 
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Comprehensive Study on Cybercrime xviii, 51. 2013. 
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Id. at, 51. 
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Id. at, 52. 

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traditional guises,
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whereas hacking, for example, does not invoke a feeling of social 
unacceptability. Rather, it is marked by the ethos of sport almost. Currently, hacking 
behavior is characterized by a laissez-faire attitude toward liability and legality in many 
jurisdictions globally..
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In this sense, conceptualization of cybercrime as a crime proper 
advances both retribution and deterrence.