The Securitization of Cyberspace: A Critical Study of Cybersecurity Studies

The emergence of cyberspace has created a new challenge for security. This means that security studies need to be updated to include the concept of cybersecurity, which is the output of the securitization of cyberspace. Our research contributes to existing debates about cyber security studies in three main ways. First, this research argues that despite scientific efforts over the past two decades, security studies regarding cybersecurity remains nascent to the extent that they need to be updated, broaden, and even challenging their previous perspectives and understandings. The research contributes to these scientific efforts by identifying the challenges facing this task. Second, the research criticizes the cyber security literature, especially the Hyper securitization of cyber threats and policies. Finally, the research critically analyzes the literature on the concept of cyber security and argues that they have failed to provide an appropriate view of this new concept, which is the gap that the paper finally tries to fill by presenting a new concept of cyber security consistent with the essence of the concept of security.