The Pursuit of Happiness

Before we dive into the roles that governments play in cybersecurity and why they play those roles, I think it’s helpful context to review the reasons governments exist in the first place. Without this context, I’ve seen some cybersecurity professionals struggle to understand what government means to their security programs and to the industry more broadly.

Political philosophers have pontificated on the purpose of government for centuries and I certainly won’t try to duplicate their work here. Social contract theory helps set the stage for the direction I want to take you. Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan, first published in 1651, describes a time before governments and the rights they bestow existed as a “state of nature” where every person had a natural right to everything. That is, there was no private property - property was yours as long as you could prevent others from taking it away from you. Subsequently, there was...