Beyond Regulatory Compliance: Towards a multi-layered responsible cybersecurity perspective

The paper develops a “multi-layered responsible cybersecurity” perspective as a holistic and collective approach to protecting people, organisations, supply chains and societies. This perspective posits that responsible cybersecurity extends beyond regulatory compliance, to the extent that it encompasses different layers of responsibilities that span across techno-centric, human-centric, organisational (intra and inter) and societal perspectives. Our theoretical development emerges from raw data through an exploratory study that involved qualitative interviews with senior cybersecurity professionals and consultants. The “responsible cybersecurity” perspective generates significant implications. First, it has implications for cybersecurity research in that it provides an integrative and balanced approach to viewing the multiple and diverse stakeholders who might be impacted by potential attacks that expand beyond regulations and the organisation. Second, it has implications for digital responsibility research
in that responsible cybersecurity can be viewed from different layers each exposing different stakeholders who may be affected as well as different responsibilities.