A typology of cybersecurity and public-private partnerships in the context of the EU

Private security beyond private military and security companies: exploring diversity within private-public collaborations and its consequences for security governance

“…In contrast, public policy-makers have primarily attempted to push for a greater security role of private companies under the rubric of public-private partnerships (PPPs), which have emerged as a particularly popular option in the last decade [21][22][23][38][39][40][41]. Albeit originally conceived in the field of administrative reform, in the 1980s, with the dual aim of debureaucratize public services and promote privatization [18,42], the concept of PPPs was subsequently utilised within the then new concept of critical infrastructure protection in the 1990s.…”

“…Bossong and Wagner [22] explore a similar line of enquiry by studying how PPPs are diversely articulated in the area of cyber security. Their article provides a conceptual mapping of the different forms and kinds of PPPs in the area of cybersecurity, especially in so far as it concerns more regular and publicly known forms of cooperation arrangements in this area, differentiating partnerships from other forms of horizontal coordination or co-regulation between public and private actors.…”

“…Bthe actor's ability to comprehend their place within the field and the relative distribution of forms of capital within it( [1], 105). According to both Bossong and Wagner [22] and Carrapico and Farrand [21], private actors in cyber security often have the upper hand because when dealing with new or advanced cyber threats, public actors often enter the public-private partnerships as the weaker partner, reliant on specialised IT companies to define both the level of vulnerability and appropriate countermeasures.…”

“…By deconstructing the mainstream discourse on the efficiency of public-private collaborations, this section underlines the diversity of security governance arrangements, as well as the recurrent absence of shared priorities and strategies between public and private actors. This section is formed of three articles: the first one, authored by Carrapico and Farrand [21], is entitled 'Dialogue, Partnership and Empowerment for Network and Information Security: The Changing Role of the Private Sector From Regulation Adopters to Regulation Shapers'; the second article, written by Bossong and Wagner [22], focuses on 'Cybersecurity and Public-Private Partnership -a clarification of roles and interactions in the context of the EU'; and the third one, produced by Bures [23], is titled 'Contributions of Private Businesses to the Provision of Security in the EU: Beyond Public-Private Partnerships'.…”

The EU as a Coherent (Cyber)Security Actor?

“…One of the problems, long identified, but not yet solved, is the existence of diverging interests where the private sector privileges efficiency and profit, and the public sector prioritizes security (Dunn Cavelty and Sutter, 2009). According to Bossong and Wagner (2016), this divergence in interests is reflected in the large multitude of ill-defined forms of public-private co-operation in the area of cybersecurity. These authors show through a comparative study of many PPPs in this area that these forms of co-operation often remain at the rhetorical level because they have little to offer to the private side.…”