1 Purpose and Scope The following material is the examination of literature on cybersecurity and cybercrime.
Although the following material does not include examination of all existing writing in the
area, it includes a number of important sources that are illustrative of the main issues
covered in contemporary works on the matters of cybersecurity and cybercrime. The
following material is presentation of the main themes and problems as reflected by the
literature as a whole without providing separate reviews on specific academic or
professional works. Rather, the result of the review is systematization of ideas and
concerns as well as existing solutions on the problem of cybercrime and cybersecurity. It is
an attempt to organize thinking and current state of academic knowledge on the issues of
cybersecurity in its very general form as allowed by the limitations of the projects.
Despite the initial proposal for the material was examination of the literature on
cybercrime, the closer analysis revealed that consideration of the issues of cybercrime in
separation from a broader concern of cybersecurity would be incomplete and would fail to
reflect the entire picture of the problem and risks associates with network technologies.
Therefore, in addition to criminal matters the material discusses a wider range of
considerations.
The term cybercrime itself, first coined by William Gibson in 1982 and popularized in his
novel
Neuromancer , became a popular descriptor of the “mentally constructed virtual
environment within which networked computer activity takes place.”
1
This term has come
to symbolize the insecurity and risks online, and is generally referred to for description of
the general concerns of cybersecurity. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Although these concepts have yet to receive clear legal definitions and are to some extent
overlapping, in this work the term cybercrime refers to considerations of criminal law and
is a subset of the general cybersecurity concept. Cybercrime therefore will be articulated as
a component of cybersecurity in light of the general concerns and problems generated by
the network and information technologies.
1
D
AVID
S.
W
ALL
,
C
YBERCRIME
:
T
HE
T
RANSFORMATION OF
C
RIME IN THE
I
NFORMATION
A
GE
10 (Polity Press. 2007).