Constructing Cybersecurity: Power, Expertise and the Internet Security Industry

Cybersecurity is often presented as a technical problem with an obvious definition and a clear set of threats. Andrew Whiting asks readers to look more closely: who gets to define the problem, whose expertise is treated as authoritative, and how do those judgments shape security policy and practice?

Constructing Cybersecurity: Power, Expertise and the Internet Security Industry offers a critical, constructivist account of how cybersecurity knowledge is produced. Its focus on the internet security industry brings private-sector expertise into view alongside the more familiar roles of governments and security professionals.

How cybersecurity knowledge takes shape

Whiting considers cybersecurity not as a fixed, self-evident category, but as something formed through discourse, professional authority and institutional relationships. Drawing on Foucauldian approaches to power and security, he examines how particular understandings gain influence—and what assumptions and limitations may accompany them.

From industry expertise to cyber-threats

The chapters trace the subject from debates over cybersecurity knowledge and the role of security professionals to the construction of the milieu, cyber-threats and cybersecurity. This progression helps readers connect the language used to describe digital risks with the people and organizations whose expertise helps make that language influential.

Why the industry matters

By centering internet security companies, the book broadens discussion beyond state agencies and technical defenses. It explores how relationships between industry experts and traditional political and security professionals can shape what counts as a threat and which responses appear reasonable. The result is a perspective attentive to the politics behind cybersecurity’s claims of expertise.

For readers of critical security and digital politics

This scholarly study will interest readers in critical cybersecurity studies, security studies and political science, as well as those examining the relationship between private expertise, state authority and digital life. It offers a framework for questioning not only how cybersecurity is pursued, but also how its priorities are established.