Examining the Landscape of Unauthorised Cyber Access (with Reference to POSTnote #684)

A recent publication in the UK Parliament’s Office of Science and Technology (POST)’s established ‘POSTnote’ series, titled: States’ use of cyber operations (No. 684, October 2022), examined hostile state-backed cyber activities (‘POST is an office of both [UK] Houses of Parliament charged with providing independent and balanced analysis of policy issues that have a basis in science and technology’—for more, see via: https://post.parliament.uk/ ). The POSTnote also evaluated how and why states use cyber operations against other nations and the threats posed to the UK, as well as scoping both UK and international mitigation approaches (POST (27 October 2022)). This chapter uses the above POSTnote publication as a basis for developing a landscape of threats resulting from unauthorised access via cyberspace. The introductory paragraph of the POSTnote states specifically that: States are increasingly engaging in cyber operations to support their strategic aims. This POSTnote considers hostile state-backed cyber activities. It looks at how and why states use cyber operations against other nations and the threats posed to the UK. It also consider mitigations, both internationally and in the UK (Ibid., p. 1). This chapter aims to establish a ‘Problem Space’ (PS), which reflects the main variables and their respective ‘states’ and ‘conditions’ as identified by the POSTnote #684 document. The work has been undertaken as a demonstrator and proof-of-concept exercise for the purposes of helping analysts and decision-makers explore an array of strategic options that require their deployment in order to address the problem of unauthorised cyber access.