Cybersecurity, cyberspace and cyberthreats at the beginning of the 21st century: a Latin America typology and review

Concepts of 'cyberspace', 'cybersecurity' and 'cyberthreats' and an analysis of policy documents are employed to explore the character and evolution of cybersecurity policies in Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, chosen as examples of 'accelerated', 'transitional' and 'lagging' Latin American development. Mexico focused on the stability of the Internet as a space that contributes to faster economic growth. Columbia's 'risk management' path seeks a balance between plausible threat evaluation and the estimated cost of eliminating them and concentrates on the active prevention of cyberattacks, emphasising the importance of developing concrete mechanisms for international regulation in the field of cybersecurity. The approach to cybersecurity of the Dominican Republic is based on the idea of ensuring a rapid transition to an innovative development model with the widespread introduction of information and communication technology (ICT), while addressing domestic cybercrime to which ordinary citizens and businesses are constantly exposed to. Comparing these experiences, it is clear that these approaches are characterised by two trends: randomness and non-imitation.