Cybersecurity in Switzerland

Gives the reader a detailed account of how cyber-security in Switzerland has evolved over the years, using official documents and a considerable amount of inside knowledge. It focuses on key ideas, institutional arrangements, on the publication of strategy papers, and importantly, on processes leading up to these strategy documents. At all times, the book pays particular attention to internal and external context. On the one hand, those are the peculiarities of the Swiss political system, which influence the way cyber-security can be designed and practiced in Switzerland. On the other, bigger, global influences and driving factors that shaped the Swiss approach to cyber-security are taken into consideration. It shows that throughout the years, the most important influence on the Swiss policy-approach was the international level, or rather the developments of a cyber-security policy in other states. However, even though many of the basic ideas about information-sharing and public-private partnerships were influenced by i.e. the US approach to critical infrastructure protection, the peculiarities of the Swiss political system led to a particular Swiss solution , which is based on high sensitivity to federalist structures and subsidiary principles and characterized by stability and resilience to external shocks in the form of cyber-incidents.§