Legal, Economic and Cyber Security Framework Considerations for Drone Usage

Abstract

Drones have been used in recent years more and more in various economic sectors (e.g., military, agriculture, retail, transport), but also for personal use and entertainment. The current legislative framework and cyber security standards do not fully address the identification of liable stakeholders in the drone ecosystem for cyber-incidents and the requirement to implement preventive cyber-security measures. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the usage of drones fits in the context of the digital economy. For this purpose, we use a complex questionnaire which was sent to a total of 233 respondents from May to July 2021. The responses are analyzed from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Our results highlight the areas of improvement in the existing legislation and find the following: (1) respondents are willing to pay additional direct and indirect costs related to cyber security to benefit from more secure drones, (2) the entire ecosystem involved in drone production, distribution, and usage is responsible for ensuring the prevention of security breaches, and (3) respondents perceive a shared liability of stakeholders for certain types of cyber-attacks depending on the role of the stakeholders in the drone ecosystem and the type of vulnerability exploited by the cyber-attack. The details on the specific cyber-attack use cases detail each of the above for each type of cyber-attack. Finally, we make proposals to accommodate the new types of use cases brought by the use of drones in various economic contexts. The results of this research paper assist policy makers in terms of improvement to existing legislation in terms of the drone ecosystem. In addition, they increase visibility for stakeholders in the drone ecosystem in terms of aspects to focus on in order to increase the trust of clients in drone usage.