An ontology-based distributed whiteboard to determine legal responses to online cyber attacks

Purpose - This paper aims to assist investigators and attorneys addressing the legal aspects of cyber incidents, and allow them to determine the legality of a response to cyber attacks by using the Worldwide web securely. Design/methodology/approach - Develop a decision support legal whiteboard that graphically constructs legal arguments as a decision tree. The tree is constructed using a tree of questions and appending legal documents to substantiate the answers that are known to hold in anticipated legal challenges. Findings - The tool allows participating group of attorneys to meet in cyberspace in real time and construct a legal argument graphically by using a decision tree. They can construct sub-parts of the tree from their own legal domains. Because diverse legal domains use different nomenclatures, this tool provides the user the capability to index and search legal documents using a complex international legal ontology that goes beyond the traditional LexisNexis-like legal databases. This ontology itself can be created using the tool from distributed locations. Originality/value - This tool has been fine-tuned through numerous interviews with attorneys teaching and practicing in the area of cyber crime, cyber espionage, and military operations in cyberspace. It can be used to guide forensic experts and law enforcement personnel during their active responses and off-line examinations.