Cybersecurity at European Level: The Role of Information Availability

This paper aims to analyse the cybersecurity issue, taking into account the investment behaviour of operators managing ICT infrastructures and providing ICT services and trying to investigate which kind of actions must be implemented to increase their security level. The main finding is that information availability plays a key role in the cyber-risk assessment for ICT operators and is also critical for improving the cybersecurity behaviour of other ICT stakeholders. From the ICT operator perspective, lack of information affects the real perception of cyber-threat occurrence, the vulnerability of his system and the potential loss in case of cyber-attack. As ICT systems have to be regarded as a network of different actor categories, regulation efforts at the European level should focus on spreading information among all ICT stakeholders in order to reduce failures of the cybersecurity market. Virtuous behaviour of other ICT stakeholders may increase the level of cybersecurity also by reducing the current lack of information on cyber-attacks of ICT operators and pushing their investments.