Protecting Information: Active Cyber Defence for the Business Entity: A Prerequisite Corporate Policy

INTRODUCTIONWe now live in a period of time where the flow of and protecting that involves corporations and governments (Castell, 2009; Hood & Galas, 2003; Keyl, 2002). This period of time has been characterized as the (Floridi, 2002). The essence of the Information Age is captured succinctly by Bruce, Hick, and Cooper (2004) in their opening comments about the role of in contemporary and its impact within the corporate environment.Information is the most valuable commodity in the world. It 's more valuable than money, with it one can make money. It's more valuable than power, with it one can achieve power. It's more valuable than goods, with it one can build, acquire, and improve goods. In any business, in any industry, in any part of the world, the right is absolutely priceless. (Bruce, Hick, & Cooper, 2004, p. 11)Webster (2006) proposed that the information society is subject to abuse, threats, and could be used to cause harm to the individuals who surrendered their personal to the corporation. This harm has been variously estimated to cost each identity theft victim approximately $1,600 (USD) (Baum, 2007) to recover from identity theft. For corporations the cost of cybercrime is expensive.According to Ponemon Institute (2012) investigations, incident recovery, and victim payments doubled between 2010 - 2012 (Table 1), and expect to increase the foreseeable future.IBM's 2015 study of the corporate data breach costs for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential increased 6 percent, jumping from $145 in 2014 to $154 in 2015. The lowest cost per lost or stolen record is in the transportation industry, at $121, and the public sector, at $68. The retail industry's average cost increased exponentially, from $105 last year to $165.In response to these concerns a growing industry, corporations, science and computer science researchers have developed a number of tactical and strategic responses such as firewalls, encryption, and software tools (Hopkins, 2011; Lachow, 2013; Public Safety Canada, 2011) to protect assets. Despite the level of success, these tactical and strategic responses have caused frustration. The cyber criminals continue to steal information, damage corporate assets, seemingly, without any consequence (Public Safety Canada, 2011). This has caused the corporations to seriously assess the relevancy and effectiveness of their cyber protection policies and possible activation of corporate cyber-defensive strategies against cyber criminals.One possible alternative to current practices is to develop and utilize an active cyber defence (ACD) strategy. ACD is a series of technological and socially engineered tactics which focus on deterring the cybercriminal. ACD relies on hacker techniques such as hack backs, denial of services attack, malware deployment, and ransomware. In other words corporations and governments would use the same technologies a cybercriminal uses when attacking.Dogrul, Aslan, and Celik (2011) defined cyber deterrence as the proactive measures that are taken to counter cyber-terrorism activities. The mission of cyber deterrence is to prevent enemies from conducting future attacks by changing their minds, by attacking their technology, or by more palpable means such as confiscation, termination, incarceration, casualty, or destruction (p. 39). However, the current legal environment clearly prevents corporations from engaging in ACD.This paper explored the following questions:1. Are corporations and governments willing and able to conduct active cyber defence operations?2. If active cyber defence were legalized would corporate decision makers conduct ACD?PROTECTING THE INFORMATION SOCIETYCastell's (2010) study of networked societies and Hopkins (2011) study of protecting the revealed that it was necessary to understand how constructs cybersecurity as a social phenomenon. …

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