Building on conceptual work on security and cyber security, the paper explores how different approaches to cyber security are constructed. It outlines structural components and presents four common approaches. Each of them suggests a different role for the actors involved and is motivated and justified by different values such as privacy, economic order and national security. When a cyber security policy or initiative is chosen by policymakers, the analysis of the underlying approach enhances our understanding of how this shapes relationships between actors and of the values prioritised, promoted and inscribed into the concerned technologies.