International Cyber Law

Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)

Dr Kubo Macak (Law) was awarded an ESRC IAA Co-creation Award to collaborate with the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NCISA) in the Czech Republic in order to an interactive open-access online toolkit for legal advisors and decision-makers who face the need to apply international cyber law in their daily practice.

The challenge 

Legal advisors and decision-makers are regularly confronted by the need to respond efficiently to the challenges posed by modern technology and cyber operations from the perspective of international law. Malicious cyber operations have the capacity to cripple critical national infrastructure and paralyse public institutions. Accordingly, States need to ensure that their national objectives are safeguarded when confronted by such cyber threats posed by other States and non-State actors alike.

Therefore, legal advisors and decision-makers must determine how international law applies to cyber operations conducted by their own States as well as by their adversaries. Although this is an area marked by strong academic interest and research, there was a gap in the understanding of the practical implications of international cyber law among practitioners.

What was done to help

Dr Macak aimed to bridge this gap in understanding by developing, testing, publishing and disseminating an interactive toolkit for the primary benefit of non-academic end users, thus assisting legal advisors and decision-makers in understanding and assessing the law applicable to cyber operations.

In order to achieve this objective the project team undertook to;

• Co-create, test, publish and disseminate an interactive open-access online toolkit for legal advisors and decision-makers who face the need to apply international cyber law in their daily practice
• Build capacity by improving legal advisors and decision makers’ performance in the field of international cyber law through clearer legal analysis when resolving practical challenges
• Generate impact by directly assisting legal advisors and decision-makers in responding to challenges in cyber operations, ensuring compliance with international cyber law and promoting cyber security goals while strengthening the rule of law. 

On 29 May 2018, the pilot workshop of the project was held on the margins of the 10th annual International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon). Attendees included legal practitioners, cyber security experts, and researchers from armed forces, government bodies, international organizations, and academic institutions in Europe, North America, and the Middle East.

On 8 February 2019, the second project workshop was held at the University of Exeter. Participants included cyber law experts, legal practitioners, and academics from Europe, the Middle East, South and North America. The participants reviewed the current version of the Toolkit and discussed its further development and dissemination.

The results

Whilst the Project collaborators are committed to continue working on the project in the medium to long term, notable successes of the project to date have been:

• The toolkit is expected to serve as an input for the development of new National Cyber Security Strategy (expected from 2020) and NCISA staff will use the Toolkit for training purposes in its internal and external educational activities.
• Dr Macak has been invited to officially launch the Toolkit at the world’s foremost conference for cyber security professionals, CyCon 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia.
• It is expected that the Toolkit will be used by several NATO member states (including by their governmental agencies and their military forces) for technical and legal skill development. A provisional agreement with the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) reached recently may see the Toolkit used for capacity building purposes on a global scale.