Disentangling (Cyber)Security from the Privacy Debate in the IoT

This chapter aims to disentangle the analysis on ‘security’ from a normative perspective. Through a doctrinal literature review, the resulting analytical framework shall serve as a solid foundation for the legal analysis of the EU legal frameworks regulating IoT cybersecurity that follows in the next chapter. The first part delves into the scope and rationale of the concept of ‘cybersecurity’, which is often used interchangeably with the more established terms computer or information security. Cybersecurity is relevant not only as a value per se i.e., a fundamental good worth of protection. It also needs to be upheld in view of national security, digital market’s functioning and development and fundamental rights and freedoms protection. This ‘instrumental perspective’ paves the way for a normative theoretical framework which would treat cybersecurity—in its sole dimension of systems’ robustness—as a public good to be managed in the public interest. The instrumental and fundamental understandings of ‘security’ might be better appreciated when distinguishing between the intertwined concepts of safety and security, especially considering the paradigm shift brought by the IoT, for it bridges the physical and cyber dimensions.