Mapping the landscape of government data breaches: A bibliometric analysis of literature from 2006 to 2023

Abstract

Data breaches in the government sector are severe threats to cybersecurity and illegal acts that flagrantly violate security and privacy laws. It undermines public trust in government data management. Unlike breaches in other sectors, these incidents can have far-reaching consequences and the potential to cause significant damage to governance and national security. This field has experienced rapid growth in recent years, which means an increase in urgency to address this challenge. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis to evaluate the scientific landscape of government data breaches. It analysed 107 articles published from 2006 to 2023 from the Scopus database. The key findings highlighted trends in scientific production, the most cited articles, country contributions, co-occurrence networks, thematic evolution, and factorial analysis. Ransomware has become one of the biggest challenges in cybersecurity, especially for governments. The use of increasingly sophisticated zero-day attack techniques makes it difficult for law enforcement to track the digital footprints of perpetrators. The regulations on data protection remain inadequate and require improvement. The existing legal framework is not strong enough to reduce data breaches in cyberspace. Therefore, to deal with cyber threats, such as ransomware, cyber risk management is essential and using cloud computing raises new challenges and opportunities in cybersecurity. These findings contribute to future research and practice as guidance for policymakers, system developers, researchers, and practitioners in improving cybersecurity protocols and shaping government regulations and policies.