As we rely more and more on information and communication technology, cybersecurity becomes both essential and problematic to our societies. On the one hand, cybersecurity is essential to pre-vent cyber threats from undermining citizens’ trust and confidence not only in the digital infrastruc-ture but in policy makers and state authorities as well. On the other hand, cybersecurity is problem-atic because enforcing it may endanger fundamental values like equality, fairness, autonomy, or pri-vacy.
The CANVAS project aims to foster value-driven cybersecurity, with respect to European values and fundamental rights. Its first milestone is to consolidate existing knowledge and data related to cyber-security in four areas, namely the ethical, legal, empirical, and technological domains.
This White Paper summarises currently available empirical data about attitudes and opinions of citizens and state actors regarding cybersecurity. It describes what these stakeholders generally think, what they feel, and what they do about cyber threats and security (counter)measures. For citizens’ perspectives, three social spheres of particular interest are exam-ined: 1) health, 2) business, 3) police and national security.
This unique synthesis builds on a variety of sources with both quantitative and qualitative data. For citizens’ perspectives, our sources include reports from EU projects and Eurobarometer surveys, as well as additional scientific papers. As for state actors’ perspectives, they rely essentially on policy documents, as they are the most relevant data available.