Matrix Based Integrated Framework for Multi Disciplinary Exploration of Cyber-International Relations

摘要

Cyberspace is the most pervasive and rapidly adopted communication media and the most disruptive until date. It is now indispensable for almost every facet of modern society. Given the widespread availability of tools to operate in this environment, a growing array of actors are trying to benefit as they seek to control critical decision points in the real world and cyberspace. It is imperative to understand what cyberspace 'is made of' - over and above the Internet and answer the question 'who gets what, when, and how.' The intent of this research is to contribute to the generation, management and sharing of knowledge to enhance understandings of the emerging area of cyber-international relations as a complex, flexible and adaptive domain of interactions. The first contribution is the development of a multi-dimensional Cyber System for Strategic Decisions (CSSD) framework. The framework enables holistic identification of elements of a system, which are structured as set of nested and hierarchical relationships. It facilitated in mapping the entities that comprise different domains of cyberspace and the dependencies within and across those entities. The second contribution is development of foundations for an internally consistent and articulate representation of cyber-international relations in terms of actors. This approach can be applied to diverse domains to build scenarios and model different facets of both the real world and cyberspace. The third contribution of this thesis is the development of a robust, comprehensive, and coherent test use-case based on 'Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)' domain. The CSSD framework is then adapted to test its applicability to the use-case. IPR has been selected as the test use-case because it provided both the legal understanding and legislative efforts at international level, in as collaborative, effective and uniform manner as possible, to protect rights of intellectual property owners and to avoid future conflicts.