Many technological and technical challenges affect cybersecurity.

1. Towards better understanding Cybersecurity: or are "Cyberspace" and "Cyber Space" the same? Stuart Madnick1, Nazli Choucri1, Steven Camina1, Wei Lee Woon2 1Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2Masdar Institute of Science and Technology Introduction • Many technological and technical challenges affect cybersecurity. • However, human actions (or inactions) can sometimes pose the largest risks. • One problem: we often don’t “see the world” the same way. For a start, what does “cybersecurity” actually mean? How is it related to “cyberthreat,” “cybercrime,” etc.? • Dictionaries, glossaries and other sources tell you what words/phrases are supposedto mean, but may not accurately reflect what they actuallymean,or how they are used in practice. “Cyberspace” “Cyber Space” Objectives Method • To demonstrate this point, consider the case of “cyberspace” vs “cyber space” • It might be assumed that “cyberspace” and “cyber space” are essentially the same word, with just a minor variation in punctuation. But is this necessarily true? • We have developed techniques for automatically generating taxonomies for selected “seed terms” using large document repositories, such as Compendex and Inspec, based on co-occurrence. • These taxonomies reflect relationship amongst terms, and help to elucidate broad usage patterns. • We can use this to test the previous assumption - if “cyberspace” and “cyber space” are indeed the same, we expect roughly similar taxonomies. • Lots of scope for future research, including: • Detailed study of reasons behind observed differences (we do know some) • Different “seed terms” (e.g., “cyberthreat”) • Alternative text databases/source types • Different taxonomy generation algorithms • “Face validity” via consultation with domain experts Discussion • The taxonomies above are very different. • Possible reasons: • Authors of papers in different fields use different terms • Usage of terms vary across geographical regions • Different words may have been favored in different time periods Acknowledgements: This work was supported, in part, by the MIT-Harvard “Explorations in Cyber International Relations” (ECIR) Project, which is funded by the Office of Naval Research under award number N00014-09-1-0597. Any opinion or findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.