The Security of Self: A Human-Centric Approach to Cybersecurity

Dr. Emily Laidlaw and Dr. Florian Martin-Bariteau co-led work to rethink cybersecurity through a human-centric lens, developing the concept of “security of self” as a way to place people, their rights, behaviours, vulnerabilities, identities, and lived experiences at the centre of cybersecurity law, policy, design, and governance. Their work responds to a gap in traditional cybersecurity thinking, which often focuses on infrastructure, organizations, and technical systems while overlooking the people those systems are meant to protect. They argue that cybersecurity should be understood not only as a technical or institutional concern, but as a social practice connected to human rights, safety, privacy, dignity, and the realities of life in increasingly digital environments.  

The project brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including law, computer science, public policy, criminology, history, neuroscience, religion, and related fields, culminating in the open-access edited collection The Security of Self: A Human-Centric Approach to Cybersecurity. Through case studies and interdisciplinary analysis, the contributors examined how emerging technologies such as virtual reality, smart homes, AI chatbots, Internet of Things devices, and tracking technologies can create or intensify harms when human vulnerabilities and misuse are not considered at the design and policy stages. A key insight from the work is that design choices are never neutral: systems that are too rigid, too permissive, or built for convenience without sufficient attention to risk can expose people—especially women, queer people, racialized people, unhoused people, people with lower technological literacy, and other marginalized groups—to serious harms.  

Laidlaw and Martin-Bariteau’s work calls for a shift in how governments, companies, developers, cybersecurity professionals, and policymakers approach digital security. Rather than treating users as the weak point in a system, they recommend building laws, policies, platforms, and products around people’s needs, risks, and rights from the start. This includes safety-by-design practices, stronger attention to victim support and community responses, and a more comprehensive approach to digital governance that connects privacy, AI, platform regulation, online harms, and infrastructure security. Their next steps include applying the security of self framework to specific threats, including artificial intelligence, and continuing to develop practical tools for designing and governing technologies that are secure because they protect the people who use and are affected by them.