Understanding evolving challenges and threats, developing effective defence mechanisms, and safeguarding digital infrastructure and data against cyber attacks.
Cyberspace allows governments, organisations, and individuals to connect, communicate, and collaborate in ways like never before. The digital world, and the technical infrastructure that enables it, has created new opportunities for prosperity, transparency, and equality.
Today, cyber security is an essential component of state power and global security. But the same technologies that unlock unprecedented benefits also present significant, systemic risks. State and non-state actors engage in cyber attacks, cyber espionage, cybercrime, and cyber-enabled influence operations that destroy critical infrastructure, erase economic gains, threaten national security, and undermine the very fabric of democratic societies.
When the networks all around us are compromised, ways of life—and life itself—are put at risk.
States are struggling to keep pace with these challenges. While the digital realm is no longer a lawless frontier, regulation has lagged behind innovation. More work is needed to apply existing laws to cyberspace, develop new rules where gaps exist, and identify areas where the law falls short. As cyber threats multiply, the effective management of cyberspace requires building more resilient cyber security capacities and infrastructure at every level, both within and between states.
Our mission at the School is to empower governments to improve cyber security at the domestic, regional, and global levels.
The Oxford Institute for Cyber and Technology Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government seeks to advance research and debate on how to make cyberspace more secure, resilient, and equitable. Through policy-relevant research, the Institute will incubate new ideas and enhance government capacity to solve the world’s most pressing cyber security challenges.
Our work will:
- Empower governments to form and implement cyber policy better. We will identify the policies, processes, mindsets, and technical tools needed to anticipate, prevent, and mitigate cyber security risks.
- Foster more productive, inclusive, and transformative dialogue on cyber security. We will build a bridge between policymakers, technical experts, and civil society, ensuring that voices from the Global South are heard.
- Strengthen the governance of cyberspace. We will propose international mechanisms and standards to strengthen digital governance at a time when cyberspace is increasingly contested.
Currently we are focused on three workstreams:
- Cyber Policy Seminar Series
This series is bringing together senior practitioners from around the world in conversation with leading academics to discuss shared challenges in cyberspace (featuring leaders such as Jen Easterly, and the Assistant secretary general of NATO) - Rising Cyber Leaders Programme
This executive programme is aimed at addressing the growing problem of cyber inequity between countries that are cyber resilient and those that are not, creating systemic risk at the global level. This programme offers scholarships to train future leaders who will shape global cyber governance, recruiting students from diverse backgrounds and the global south. - Thematic Projects
We are focused on a range of thematic projects encompassing global cyber governance, ransomware and policy responses to cybercrime, and emerging technology in war, including how AI is being used both to wage war and to build peace:- Global cyber governance – led by Assistant Professor Roxana Radu.
The Oxford Process on International Law Protections in Cyberspace, funded by Microsoft and the Government of Japan, resulted in five statements on the regulation of cyber operations in healthcare, vaccine research, election interference, ransomware, and information operations that have been widely adopted in the legal community, amongst states, and at the United Nations. - Ransomware and cybercrime – led by Professor Ciaran Martin
A project on how governments have responded to the surge in ransomware threats since 2020, using a case study approach. Examining shift from strictly defensive stance to proactive cybersecurity measures, reconceptualising the spectrum of lawful responses under international law - Emerging technology in conflict – led by Dr Brianna Rosen
Focusing on cyber warfare, AI in war and peace-building
- Global cyber governance – led by Assistant Professor Roxana Radu.
Contact
Contact Brianna Rosen about the project to get involved.