Abstract

This paper evaluates factors contributing to misalignment of the South African National Cybersecurity Framework (SA-NCPF) and suggest better ways to align the national policy framework to national, regional and global cyberlaws. The SA-NCPF is designed to mitigate, address and provide the regulatory guidelines relating to escalating cybercrimes, however, the complexity and interplays of factors contributing to misalignment make it difficult to achieve and measure alignment of national cyberlaws. The SA-NCPF recognises the complexities, inconsistencies, fragmentation and poor coordination of e-legislation, thus, it is imperative to recommend the removal of hindrances. By reviewing various literature, we were able to discuss and integrate a number of theoretical works that explain inconsistencies/misalignments in law. We synthesised literature to produce an integrated theoretical framework, which is a major innovation of this study. The integrated theoretical framework provides a broader perspective of the influencing factors and their interplay resulting in complex relationships which are difficult to understand. The researchers used the integrative theoretical framework and the configuration approach to develop a conceptual model. This model guides the measurement of the extent of alignment of the influencing factors and the identification of that combinations of these factors that yields an effective Cybersecurity Policy Framework. The conceptual model will be validated in a later study.

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