This is Why we don’t have Meaningful Cybersecurity Legislation Yet

[Commentary] Why is it so difficult for governments to establish proper legislation about security and privacy? Physical laws are created for a particular territory, like a town or country. This is an iterative process that has taken us over 300 years to establish a set of laws by which we live today. The issue of governing the multidimensional virtual world is rather complex, as it is not easy to define the territory.

Territory boundaries in the cyber realm are naturally based on a large network boundaries on which citizens interact daily -- making purchases, doing taxes, renewing insurance, communicating with friends and family -- all online. These boundaries generally do not line up with state lines or country borders. Governments have only been working to establish laws for the cyber realm in the past five to 10 years, which means they are not very experienced yet, and there’s a lot more work to be done. The starting point here should be to identify the parameters of the situation.

[Dr. Vincent Berk is CEO of network security company FlowTraq]