The heritage of DigiNotar: real threats or framing?: A single case study on the attention for cybersecurity on the Dutch political agenda

The Copenhagen School brought security back to the arena of debate in the 1990s and it has been a popular framework since. This thesis is devoted to this concept of securitization in the domain of cyber. In 2011, a breach was detected in DigiNotar, a company that issued online certificates. This almost led to a total blackout in the Netherlands, showing the vulnerabilities in the Dutch digital domain. The remarkable aspect of this crisis (which has become known as the DigiNotar-crisis) is the reluctant reaction of the ministers and senior officials with regards to cybersecurity. In 2018, however, this topic ruled the security debate, despite the fact that no clear threat or equivalent crisis has occurred in the Netherlands since the DigiNotar-crisis. This thesis takes the concept of securitization, known as the Copenhagen School, and applies it to the cyber sector, that is characterized by three specific modalities of securitizations: hypersecuritizations, everyday security...Show moreThe Copenhagen School brought security back to the arena of debate in the 1990s and it has been a popular framework since. This thesis is devoted to this concept of securitization in the domain of cyber. In 2011, a breach was detected in DigiNotar, a company that issued online certificates. This almost led to a total blackout in the Netherlands, showing the vulnerabilities in the Dutch digital domain. The remarkable aspect of this crisis (which has become known as the DigiNotar-crisis) is the reluctant reaction of the ministers and senior officials with regards to cybersecurity. In 2018, however, this topic ruled the security debate, despite the fact that no clear threat or equivalent crisis has occurred in the Netherlands since the DigiNotar-crisis. This thesis takes the concept of securitization, known as the Copenhagen School, and applies it to the cyber sector, that is characterized by three specific modalities of securitizations: hypersecuritizations, everyday security practices and technification. This thesis applies those three modalities in letters to the Dutch parliament concerning cybersecurity. aiming to investigate how securitization developed over time and to clarify why the political attention on cybersecurity increased in a time without a visible and direct threat, while the biggest crisis so far was not enough to cause changes (DigiNotar). This thesis shows that cyber securitizations increased in the period between 2011 and 2020. All three modalities were identified in the letters, with increasing frequency in the last years. A remarkable finding is that cybersecurity became a more integral security issue when the new cabinet was appointed in 2017-2018. In conclusion, this inductive research has proven the applicability of ‘cyber securitization’ in the Dutch context, and has shown that the change of securitizing actors (the Dutch cabinet) influenced the intensity of cyber securitizations and the political agenda more than the DigiNotar-crisis did.Show less

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The heritage of DigiNotar: real threats or framing? A single case study on the attention for cybersecurity on the Dutch political agenda