Melissa Lukings - Understanding Cybersecurity Law and Digital Privacy: A Common Law Perspective

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The internet, digital media, and online communication have become an integral part of our modern world. Over the past few decades, we have seen the internet evolve, becoming anchored within our households, and a near requirement for accessing education. Our previous hardwired telephone systems were replaced first by mobile phones and then by smartphones. Our cars, our watches, our appliances, all are connected and help to keep us connected to each other. Economically, our commercial endeavors have shifted to increase their reach to a wider range of potential customers, no longer limited by distance creating the online economy.

While we are more connected than ever before, our connectedness has become necessarily dependent on our having sustainable and reliable access to digital technology and online networks. As our society has shifted away from the paper filing methods of the past and onto digital platforms, we have begun storing greater amounts of data, records, media, creative content, and other valuable information online. More still, to improve access to banking and financial services, many of these corporations have launched digital platforms, apps, and other networked methods to the delight of many consumers. Even more recently, we have seen health care service provision move from an in-person clinical model to a model based on online remote consultation, even from the comfort of our own homes. The access and freedom we have with our ability to share information is unprecedented in our history.

This interconnectedness, however, comes with its own novel set of risks and necessary risk assessments. Rather than protecting our stored records in locked filing cabinets, in offices and storage roomscarbon copied, printed, or written on paperwe are increasingly moving toward full digital integration with online cloud-based platforms for data storage. While we no longer have to safeguard our documents and data with security guards, locking systems, alarms, and other physical protective mechanisms, we have also removed the barrier of distance from accessing our stored records. Rather than safeguarding our data from localized tangible physical intrusion, we must now work to create and maintain safeguards and protective standards that will prevent remote intangible digital intrusion; cybersecuritya whole new world.

In the not-so-recent past, we relied on physical safeguards to prevent data theft and unauthorized access. When those safeguards failed, we would turn to the legal systemcriminal or civil depending on the severity of the theft or breachto penalize or provide a remedy in law for the act. It should not come as a surprise that our shift onto online platforms has created an obstacle in our ability to apply the law as it was previously written and applied. In this way, our law has had to evolve from our former concept of privacy law and security in law to our newer fields of data privacy law and cybersecurity in law for our online medium.

Understanding Cybersecurity and Digital PrivacyA Common Law Perspective is the second book in the Understanding Cybersecurity Series (UCS), following the precursory publication, Understanding Cybersecurity Management in FinTech mid-way through 2021. In this installment of the series, we discuss the theory and principles of legal application in (data) privacy and (cyber) security which underpin our digital relationships; personal, professional, commercial, and organizational.

This book provides insight into the pre-digital concept of property ownership, possession, interest, and privacy which form the basis of our tort and property laws. We examine the roots of systems of law and legal governance, building up to an analysis of cybercriminal activities and the issues which arise in dealing with these new areas under the old law. We discuss the methods used by a selection of common law countries in addressing privacy and online interpersonal matters, providing a comparison between these models. Finally, we take a look at the upcoming trends in data privacy and cybersecurity law.