Refocusing and Redefining Cybersecurity: Individual Security in the Digitalising European High North

Abstract

This article introduces cybersecurity in the discussion on security in the European High North in a redefined and refocused form. Instead of scrutinising the technical measures taken to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in systems and networks (information security) or the criticality of a number of digitally operated infrastructures to the functioning of society (national cybersecurity), it concentrates on the human being. It examines cybersecurity from an individual’s perspective by asking what kind of personal security concerns people may have with regard to digitalisation and how those are or are not present in the discussion on health and social security re-organisation in the Finnish Lapland. The theoretical foundation of this article rests within the human security framework. Individuals living their everyday lives in particular cyber-physical environments are taken as the referent object of security. In the digitalising European High North, multiple aspects of everyday security depend upon cybersecurity, including economic, environmental, and food securities. This article concentrates on health and social security. It examines linkages between the re-organisation of health and social security in Finland and personal security concerns with a particular focus on the case of Länsi-Pohja area in south-western Lapland. The overall aim is to create room for bottom-up influence on the primarily top-down processes of security production in the cyber-physical environment.