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Philosophy of Cybersecurity
Technology and digitization are a great social good. But they also involve risks and threats. Cybersecurity is not just a matter of data or computer security; cybersecurity is about the security of society. Why "Philosophy"? To understand how to reason and think about threats and cybersecurity in today’s and tomorrow’s world, this book is necessary to equip readers with awareness. Philosophy of Cybersecurity is about the user’s perspective, but also about system issues. This is a book for everyone―a wide audience. Experts, academic lecturers, as well as students of technical fields such as computer science and social sciences will find the content interesting. This includes areas like international relations, diplomacy, strategy, and security studies. Cybersecurity is also a matter of state strategy and policy. The clarity and selection of broad material presented here may make this book the first book on cybersecurity you’ll understand. It considers such detailed basics as, for example, what a good password is and, more importantly, why it is considered so today. But the book is also about systemic issues, such as healthcare cybersecurity (challenges, why is it so difficult to secure, could people die as a result of cyberattacks?), critical infrastructure (can a cyberattack destroy elements of a power system?), and States (have they already been hacked?). Cyberspace is not a "grey zone" without rules. This book logically explains what cyberwar is, whether it threatens us, and under what circumstances cyberattacks could lead to war. The chapter on cyberwar is relevant because of the war in Ukraine. The problem of cyberwar in the war in Ukraine is analytically and expertly explained. The rank and importance of these activities are explained, also against the background of broader military activities. The approach we propose treats cybersecurity very broadly. This book discusses technology, but also ranges to international law, diplomacy, military, and security matters, as they pertain to conflicts, geopolitics, political science, and international relations.
224 pages, Paperback
Published September 19, 2023
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August 14, 2025
A firewall hums in the corner of an office, unnoticed, until the day its silence becomes the loudest in the room. Olejnik and Kurasiński’s PHILOSOPHY OF CYBERSECURITY begins from this awareness, that the systems sustaining modern life exist in a state of fragility, operating out of sight—invisible—yet perpetually exposed to the latent pressure of risk, one wherein a single misconfigured device or unheeded alert can set the first domino tipping, shifting the focus from the background process to the fulcrum on which entire operations, even societies, teeter. The
first domino
is always small: a misstep invisible to anyone but the attacker who notices the opening, a tremor that feels containable until it brushes against the next piece in line.
Cybersecurity, in Olejnik and Kurasiński’s telling, begins with thought before the tools. It is the act of reading uncertainty until a pattern emerges that forces the hand toward action. Each thread in that pattern leads somewhere, and to follow it is to feel the presence of another mind at work. Every breach carries intention. Every disruption has a mind behind it. Thus, to defend, one must first inhabit that mind—to follow the imagined path of intrusion, anticipate the moves that precede the headline—because the work of governance and risk gains its sharpest edge when seen through the adversary’s eyes.
From this mindset emerges the cyber kill chain: a conceptual thread that traces intrusion from the first glance of reconnaissance to the final, quiet seizure of a system’s heart. It is a way of seeing, of stepping into the rhythm of the adversary—the stray USB drive waiting in the dust of a car park, lifted by an unsuspecting hand; the dormant payload hitching a ride past the checkpoint, its presence so trivial in appearance that no one pauses to ask why it belongs. Weeks pass and the code activates, moving through restricted systems, machine to machine. Here, the second domino tips: a single compromise becomes many, the code hopping laterally, each movement carrying the weight of the last. The hum of centrifuges falters, a turbine skips its beat—then, a counterpoint: a log anomaly flickers into focus, a packet capture reveals a pattern that should not exist. The defender meets the intrusion midstep, severing connections and isolating hosts, cutting the chain short. In that instant, the unseen dialogue between the attacker and the defender ends, the sleight of hand exposed.
To comprehend such attacks is to move alongside them, to sense how a line of code or a casual click can become a lever on which critical operations tilt. As a defender, in my own practise of governance and risk, the kill chain is less a diagram than it is a lens, that is, every risk assessment is an attempt to interrupt that imagined journey before it completes, to meet the attacker mid-thought, and to return to the hum of the firewall to the background in which we can trust again.
Without defenders, the third domino falls and cascades into the world beyond the network, the point where a private compromise strains against public consequence. A misstep in a corner server room can now ripple, faster than the last, into boardrooms, headlines, and even the geopolitical stage, each threat arriving sharper than the one before.
However, beneath all of this momentum and movement rests a softer idea than what the stealth of code and the vigilance of the defender suggests, one that the book returns to again and again: trust . Trust is the air the digital world breathes, the silent agreement that allows its invisible machinery to function. Trust is the encryption that guards a transaction. Trust is the colleague who follows procedure. Trust is the system logs who speak before damage crystallises. Trust is the quiet coordination of people and processes that no one ever fully sees—and this trust radiates outward, from machines to people to the structures that bind entire societies. This is the philosophy that underpins every diagram and control the book explores—that cybersecurity is, at its foundation, the ongoing labour of maintaining confidence in what we cannot constantly verify, a fragile compact between human behaviour and technical design. Trust is my work in governance and risk, trust is mapping the spaces where probability becomes responsibility—
—and trust is what lingers when the hum returns to the background, trust is what endures long after the last alert fades from the dashboard. Trust is that the policies will hold, trust is that life will move forward over cables and circuits, across borders and into boardrooms, without incident; yet trust is never permanent for it lives on the edge of attention, one where I stand closeby. Somewhere, an attacker moves through the stages of their imagined chain; somewhere, a small device waits to become the origin of a malicious story.
If the dominos fall unchecked, the story surges through machines, into offices, across cities, blacking out grids, halting trains, silencing hospitals—then it leaps into nations, and the world tilts, MARKETS SHATTER, TREATIES FRACTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE BURNS, CHAOS SPILLS ACROSS BORDERS, THE EDGE OF ORDER BUCKLES—
—AND THEN, nothing.
The chain stops.
We return to the room from where we began, and in that waiting, the firewall remains, steady and unseen, until the day its silence becomes the loudest in the room—until trust itself finally demands to be heard.
Cybersecurity, in Olejnik and Kurasiński’s telling, begins with thought before the tools. It is the act of reading uncertainty until a pattern emerges that forces the hand toward action. Each thread in that pattern leads somewhere, and to follow it is to feel the presence of another mind at work. Every breach carries intention. Every disruption has a mind behind it. Thus, to defend, one must first inhabit that mind—to follow the imagined path of intrusion, anticipate the moves that precede the headline—because the work of governance and risk gains its sharpest edge when seen through the adversary’s eyes.
From this mindset emerges the cyber kill chain: a conceptual thread that traces intrusion from the first glance of reconnaissance to the final, quiet seizure of a system’s heart. It is a way of seeing, of stepping into the rhythm of the adversary—the stray USB drive waiting in the dust of a car park, lifted by an unsuspecting hand; the dormant payload hitching a ride past the checkpoint, its presence so trivial in appearance that no one pauses to ask why it belongs. Weeks pass and the code activates, moving through restricted systems, machine to machine. Here, the second domino tips: a single compromise becomes many, the code hopping laterally, each movement carrying the weight of the last. The hum of centrifuges falters, a turbine skips its beat—then, a counterpoint: a log anomaly flickers into focus, a packet capture reveals a pattern that should not exist. The defender meets the intrusion midstep, severing connections and isolating hosts, cutting the chain short. In that instant, the unseen dialogue between the attacker and the defender ends, the sleight of hand exposed.
To comprehend such attacks is to move alongside them, to sense how a line of code or a casual click can become a lever on which critical operations tilt. As a defender, in my own practise of governance and risk, the kill chain is less a diagram than it is a lens, that is, every risk assessment is an attempt to interrupt that imagined journey before it completes, to meet the attacker mid-thought, and to return to the hum of the firewall to the background in which we can trust again.
Without defenders, the third domino falls and cascades into the world beyond the network, the point where a private compromise strains against public consequence. A misstep in a corner server room can now ripple, faster than the last, into boardrooms, headlines, and even the geopolitical stage, each threat arriving sharper than the one before.
However, beneath all of this momentum and movement rests a softer idea than what the stealth of code and the vigilance of the defender suggests, one that the book returns to again and again: trust . Trust is the air the digital world breathes, the silent agreement that allows its invisible machinery to function. Trust is the encryption that guards a transaction. Trust is the colleague who follows procedure. Trust is the system logs who speak before damage crystallises. Trust is the quiet coordination of people and processes that no one ever fully sees—and this trust radiates outward, from machines to people to the structures that bind entire societies. This is the philosophy that underpins every diagram and control the book explores—that cybersecurity is, at its foundation, the ongoing labour of maintaining confidence in what we cannot constantly verify, a fragile compact between human behaviour and technical design. Trust is my work in governance and risk, trust is mapping the spaces where probability becomes responsibility—
—and trust is what lingers when the hum returns to the background, trust is what endures long after the last alert fades from the dashboard. Trust is that the policies will hold, trust is that life will move forward over cables and circuits, across borders and into boardrooms, without incident; yet trust is never permanent for it lives on the edge of attention, one where I stand closeby. Somewhere, an attacker moves through the stages of their imagined chain; somewhere, a small device waits to become the origin of a malicious story.
If the dominos fall unchecked, the story surges through machines, into offices, across cities, blacking out grids, halting trains, silencing hospitals—then it leaps into nations, and the world tilts, MARKETS SHATTER, TREATIES FRACTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE BURNS, CHAOS SPILLS ACROSS BORDERS, THE EDGE OF ORDER BUCKLES—
—AND THEN, nothing.
The chain stops.
We return to the room from where we began, and in that waiting, the firewall remains, steady and unseen, until the day its silence becomes the loudest in the room—until trust itself finally demands to be heard.
September 30, 2025
Good choice for people who work in cyber security area. Every topic is described in detail. Recommend it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews