TY - JOUR
T1 - Unscripted Practices for Uncertain Events
T2 - Organizational Problems in Cybersecurity Incident Management
AU - Mathew, Ashwin Jacob
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/4/9
Y1 - 2024/4/9
N2 - Scripts can help us understand the designer–user relationship, by offering analysis of designers’ intent in technological objects and examination of users’ behaviors through willingness (and unwillingness) to take on scripts. But how are we to understand these relationships in the context of cybersecurity, in the face of adversaries determined to gain unauthorized access to computer systems by actively subverting scripts? In effect, cybersecurity attacks involve re-scripting of computing systems to gain unauthorized access through unscripted features of these systems. Cybersecurity attacks are always uncertain events: attackers can never be certain when re-scripting will be successful, and defenders can never be certain when or where to expect an attack, as unscripted features are difficult to know until they are exploited. In this paper, I study practices of cybersecurity incident response to examine how cybersecurity engineers respond to the novel attacks they encounter daily. I show how these are fundamentally unscripted practices emerging in response to unstable scripts, structured through the uncertainties inherent in cybersecurity engineering practice. The improvised practices and changing networks of social relations which I trace demonstrate the limits of stable scripts and provide new tools for analyzing unstable scripts.
AB - Scripts can help us understand the designer–user relationship, by offering analysis of designers’ intent in technological objects and examination of users’ behaviors through willingness (and unwillingness) to take on scripts. But how are we to understand these relationships in the context of cybersecurity, in the face of adversaries determined to gain unauthorized access to computer systems by actively subverting scripts? In effect, cybersecurity attacks involve re-scripting of computing systems to gain unauthorized access through unscripted features of these systems. Cybersecurity attacks are always uncertain events: attackers can never be certain when re-scripting will be successful, and defenders can never be certain when or where to expect an attack, as unscripted features are difficult to know until they are exploited. In this paper, I study practices of cybersecurity incident response to examine how cybersecurity engineers respond to the novel attacks they encounter daily. I show how these are fundamentally unscripted practices emerging in response to unstable scripts, structured through the uncertainties inherent in cybersecurity engineering practice. The improvised practices and changing networks of social relations which I trace demonstrate the limits of stable scripts and provide new tools for analyzing unstable scripts.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85190417133&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/01622439241240411
DO - 10.1177/01622439241240411
M3 - Article
SN - 0162-2439
VL - 49
SP - 827
EP - 850
JO - Science, Technology and Human Values
JF - Science, Technology and Human Values
IS - 4
ER -
