Summary

Many countries and several international organisations have declared that cyber security is one of their strategic goals and have started seeking IT, political, military, economic as well as legal means to ensure such security.

In order to identify the hardships both countries and the international public face in ensuring cyber security, the article first introduces the current approach to cyber security, followed by an overview of related tensions at the international level, and ultimately outlines the legal bases and limits of ensuring cyber security based on some recent cyber incidents. The article is in part based on the author’s doctoral thesis ‘Legal Framework of Broad-based Cyber Security’.

In the first part of the article, the author takes a look at the substance and use of the compound term ‘cyber security’, explaining that both ‘cyber’ and ‘security’ mean terms that have not been definitely defined and that are in constant development. Next the author explores the development of cyber security related problems in recent years, gives an overview of the development of the cyber theme at the international level, and then proceeds to practical issues which need to be addressed at the domestic and international level. The first two parts lead in the third part of the article, which deals with approaches to institutes and concepts of law that support the solution of the problems related to cyber security.