Achieving Cyber Peace through an Effective Cybersecurity Governance: Analysis of the European Union Cybersecurity Strategy

Cybersecurity and cybersecurity governance in the EU region has been the focus of political stakeholders at the national and regional level since the early 21st century. The EU in partnership with member countries have attempted to build cybersecurity defence and resilience strategies primarily through the promulgation of Cybersecurity policies and legislations that focus on enhancing cyber infrastructures among EU countries. Beginning with the Budapest Convention in 2002, and more recently the 2013 Cyber Security Strategy, there has been annual cybersecurity reviews of existing policies to address emerging issues. These efforts have however not sufficiently addressed the growing cybersecurity threats facing EU nations and citizens so that existing statistics still puts EU organisations, governments, security infrastructures and citizens at high risks of cyber-attacks, threats and insecurity. Therefore an evaluation of the strategies adopted by the EU to enhance cyber governance within the EU cyberspace is engaged by this study to discover existing loopholes in the strategies adopted by the EU and her member countries. The aim of the study is primarily to investigate the challenges of the EU Cyber Security Strategies that tends to hinder her from achieving her stated cyber resilience goals. The Nodal Security Governance framework served as theoretical framework and analysis tool for the study. The study was essentially a qualitative study and thus engaged a critical review of extant literatures on cybersecurity governance and cybersecurity strategy in the EU. Twenty-one (21) literatures were reviewed for the study to provide answers to the following research questions; what is the conceptualisation of cybersecurity within the EU; what are the strategies adopted by the EU to achieve cyber peace within the EU; and lastly what are the challenges of cybersecurity governance within the EU? The study discovered that while the EU and her member countries have been essentially active in providing the policy frameworks necessary for addressing cybersecurity governance within the region, enough efforts have not been deployed towards addressing the regional cohesion and diplomatic relations among member countries. Essentially, it was discovered that the nature of hostile and suspicious interactions within member countries provides grounds for non-implementation of the cybersecurity strategies across the region. This suspicious atmosphere among EU countries also works negatively against cybersecurity governance in the region. As such the study recommends that efforts must be directed towards enhancing healthy diplomacy and engendering trust among member countries if the EU Cyber Security Strategies will ultimately achieve her goals of effective cyber governance within the region