1. A Case for Cybersecurity Awareness Systems

This Chapter intends to provide the context and environment leading to the development of the CS-AWARE cybersecurity awareness solution, which was comprehensively piloted and evaluated in the local public administration (LPA) use case during the CS-AWARE H2020 European research and innovation project. The Chapter assesses the main factors driving cybersecurity from a holistic multi-angle perspective, and reviews the currently actively developing European legislative cybersecurity environment, which is introducing a multi-level cybersecurity framework centred around awareness and cooperation/collaboration. Furthermore, this Chapter highlights in more detail the specific cybersecurity requirements for LPAs, which is heavily focused on the critical data they manage, and emphasizes why cybersecurity awareness plays such a crucial role in future collaborative cybersecurity in Europe, and why significant cybersecurity gains can be achieved by introducing awareness and collaboration in the context of cybersecurity management in organizations like LPAs. In the conclusion of this Chapter, we provide a brief outlook on the following chapters, which present the key aspects of the CS-AWARE cybersecurity awareness solution in greater detail.