The Global Cyber Security Model: Counteracting Cyber Attacks through a Resilient Partnership Arrangement

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The Global Cyber Security Model can be used by senior managers to establish a framework for dealing with a range of cybersecurity attacks and also, to upgrade the cybersecurity skill base of subordinates. In order for a cybersecurity mentality to be established, senior managers need to ensure that there is an open and transparent communication process in being and staff are committed to sharing cybersecurity knowledge. By placing cybersecurity within the context of a partnership arrangement, senior managers will be able to make the organization more resilient. In this manuscript, insights are provided into how senior managers can establish a Global Cyber Security Model that raises cybersecurity awareness among staff in a partnership arrangement and ensures that cyber-attacks are anticipated and dealt with in real-time. However, the manuscript is not innovative enough to be published in Big Data and Cognitive Computing. The results are not quite convincing and do not pose any significant advancement in the field of Big Data. The contribution of this paper is not enough for publication in Big Data and Cognitive Computing.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The biggest challenge here is the lack of a clear methodology as to why such an approach was chosen, what is the justification, and what then this means in terms of our confidence in the results? Having a group interaction as such offers very little confidence in the insights we get. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper the authors are discussing the necessity to create a cooperative model between senior managers and security experts to provide a stronger response the cyber security threats and challenges. In this study the authors did some interviews in order to capture, the need, the requirements, the challenges and the experience of a panel of senior managers. 

First of all, the cyber security alliances and cooperation models a re existing since several years for big companies. Several models and platforms are already avaialble in the market (or the open source community) to share information about new threats attacks and risks. Several industrial  cooperation communities are already existing and exchanging information ,data and expertise. 

Among the biggest challenges and are not yet perfectly addressed in this king of cooperation, is the relevance of the information shared and the privacy / confidentiality protection.  Concerning the relevance is it mainly related to the format and the readability of the shared data (share some logs without any metadata is useless) and how to process the huge amount of data that can be shared ? In this other hand some data can be confidential or even private so how to find a good balance between usability and privacy protection. sharing logs for example can expose some confidential data about the internal network setup. 

Concerning the study and the interviews made with the experts, the methodology was not clearly defined and the results are not pertinent. what was the outcome of the interviews, some statistics some highlights are necessary to better capture their needs. a kind of methodic analysis is missing to capture the essence of such interactions. 

The conclusion needs to be elaborated, in its current state it does not reflect the added value of such study. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

This paper presents a qualitative research strategy that involved a group interview to look into how senior managers can establish a Global Cyber Security Model that raises cybersecurity awareness among staff. 

The paper is well written and it's easy to follow. However, I would suggest the authors address several things such as clearly identify which are the contributions of this work.

There has been a significant amount of work done in the space of the Global Cyber Security Model and unfortunately, I don't see a good related work section discussed. Following on the previous point: can you compare your work with previous research efforts? This is an **important** part that needs work.

Furthermore, it is mentioned that only twenty senior cybersecurity and intelligence experts agreed to take part in the group interview. I think this is a small number and the paper should well justify the reasons not to include more participants. The qualitative coding part should be described in more detail.

Overall, the paper is well written and Cyber Security Model is an interesting research topic. However, I suggest the authors consider the suggested improvements to strengthen the research paper.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have satisfactorily modified their manuscript according to my previous criticisms. Therefore, I recommend the publication of this manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors addressed most of the recommendations of the reviewers. A real state of the art and comparative study is presented in the new version of the paper. This gives a better view on the pertinence of the proposal.