A cybernetics paradigms framework for cyberspace: Key lens to cybersecurity

There is no denial on the growing importance of cyber-security in today's ever increasing globalized world. Yet nations, enterprises and even small organizations still face difficulties with external and internal threats due to the approaches to cyber-security that are reductionist in nature. Dealing with cyber-security at the international, national and enterprise level needs approaches that works across many disciplines and are holistic. Cybernetics is one such promising approach that will aid cyber-security at all levels due to its multidisciplinary nature. But there have been no significant efforts or studies to use cybernetics for cyber-security. In this paper, we propose a generic cybernetics paradigms framework for cyberspace that will be useful to study various mechanisms of cyberspace from economics, engineering, software and social perspectives. It is argued that holistic understanding of cyberspace is the key for effective diagnosis and design of cyber-security of a nation or enterprise or small organization.