Data Breaches as Security Crises: New Publication from Andrea Zeffiro’s Research Team

Congratulations to Dr. Andrea Zeffiro and SCDS Research Assistants Gil Niessen, Clementine Oberst, Sam McEwan, Alexis-Carlota Cochrane, and Joshua Durand on their newly published peer-reviewed article “Discourses on cybersecurity. The politics of the data breach as a security crisis” in The Review of Digital Politics.

The article examines a sample of Dr. Zeffiro’s overarching research into cybersecurity, especially the shifting ways that data breaches are represented from 2005 to the present. In this piece, Zeffiro and her team chart three compelling comparisons: the 2007 TJX data breach and the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, the 2013 Yahoo data breach and Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices, and the 2018 MyFitnessPal data breach and the Gatwick drone incident.

Ultimately, Zeffiro, Niessen, Oberts, McEwan, Cochrane, and Durand show that data breaches are much more than technological errors. Rather, data breaches–and the way that companies and the media portray them–actively work to normalize surveillance and downplay how corporations increasingly own personal data.

Read the open-access article here.