Cybersecurity in Humanities and Social Sciences

5Moving from Uncertainty to Risk: The Case of Cyber Risk

5.1. Introduction

Every day, we receive information about cyber-attacks and the failures of IT systems to prevent data theft. Cybersecurity is becoming a central subject and a societal demand. With the advent of the Internet and the inter-connection of computer systems, the need to build a society that is more resilient to cyber-threats is rising. As for any other type of crime, society must learn to cope with it and fight it. One step in this direction is the study and understanding of the events that have already happened, as well as a better grasp of the various motivations for cybercrime. This chapter aims to describe the quantitative methods we are using to cope with this problem and to explain our scientific approach. It concentrates on the methodological aspects, which we illustrate with the study we have conducted on the French Gendarmerie Nationale (GN) database on cybercrime complaints registered at their offices. Some tools or methods are described more exhaustively than others, whenever they can be accessible to/understood by non-statisticians or those who would like to use them or at least understand their usage. Other more technical concepts are briefly overviewed, just to give an idea of the concept’s background.

In section 5.2, we explain the way we move from an uncertain future to a future where the uncertainty is quantifiable and thus becomes a risk that can be partly hedged. In section 5.3, we describe ...