Paper short abstract:

Investigating digital security amid breakdowns, this study explores key conceptual shifts in models like Distributed Trust and Zero Trust. Targeting unruly user behaviors compromising system security, these models reveal ethical dimensions in repair and maintenance.

Paper long abstract:

In the context of persistent breakdowns in digital infrastructure, this study examines the evolving paradigms of digital security models, specifically Distributed Trust and Zero Trust. Going beyond traditional perspectives about trust in computer science, the research elucidates their historical trajectories, unveiling a transformative shift towards recognizing human elements as crucial components in ensuring system security. The analysis highlights the broader implications of this paradigmatic transformation on the cybersecurity profession, necessitating a shift from a solely technology-centric focus to a comprehensive engagement with socio-technical mechanisms.

By comparing the trajectories of Distributed Trust and Zero Trust, this paper contributes to the discourse on resilient yet fragile digital infrastructures. It emphasizes the role played by security models as communicative and organizational artifacts in addressing unruly human behaviors and ensuring compliance with the system's security requirements. As a response to the panel's call for new forms of resilient digital infrastructures, this study presents empirical cases and conceptualizations that embrace the notion of digital infrastructures existing in a perpetual state of 'ruins'.

Indeed, both Zero Trust and Distributed Trust originate from historical experiences and widespread conversations in broader cybersecurity practitioner communities about the unreliability and failure of digital infrastructures. As such, they represent particularly valuable case studies for exploring the ethical dimensions of repair and maintenance. Additionally, this paper contributes to the panel’s call by probing discourses surrounding digitality and the deployment of theories of systems and control in discussions of reliability, security, and resilience.