Human Cognition Through the Lens of Social Engineering Cyberattacks

Montañez, Rosana; Golob, Edward J.; Xu, Shouhuai

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01755

Cited by 51 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 119 publications

(196 reference statements)

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“…The percentage of articles addressing the organisational cyber resilience policies and governance is found to be less reported (as outlined in RQ2, [ 6 , 17 , 30 , 31 ]), along with the number of articles that address methodologies for healthcare organisations to conduct cybersecurity risk assessments (as presented in RQ3, [ 7 , 17 , 25 , 40 , 41 , 43 , 48 , 49 ]). The articles reporting on the training and awareness of cybersecurity among healthcare stakeholders are presented in the literature with equal distribution of relevance as highlighted in Figure 3 for RQ4 [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. From the percentage results presented in Figure 3 for RQ5, it appears that there is a critical lack of national audits within the healthcare industry, which reports on the cyber resilience [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 22 , 31 , 50 , 51 , 52 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A well-known social engineering method is phishing. The role and impact of phishing attacks have been well studied in the literature [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 13 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 41 , 43 , 55 , 56 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Addressing the cognitive load in processing emails by healthcare professionals, ref. [ 16 ] presents a framework for evaluating the amount of attention required in deciding whether an email is authentic or phishing. The authors conclude that there is not a systematic understanding of the psychological components of these attacks, resulting in their high success rate.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this section, we present a summary analysis of the key aspects being addressed in the literature that relate to the impact of “social engineering” attacks launched against healthcare professionals. The publications are classified into three main categories, namely (i) training and awareness activities on social engineering attacks (e.g., phishing) [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]; (ii) activities related to promoting general awareness on information security against cyber attacks [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]; and (iii) best practice recommendations adopted in promoting cyber hygiene from other industrial sectors [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 66 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the increasing number of articles being published, addressing the role of humans in the loop for enhancing the cybersecurity since 2016 [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ], there is a need to consolidate the research findings. The main objective of this systematic review is to review the literature to gather evidence from organisational case studies, author observations and scientific developments in cybersecurity to identify the role of including humans in the loop for strengthening cyber defence within the healthcare industry.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Influence of Human Factors on Cyber Security within Healthcare Organisations: A Systematic Review

Nifakos

Chandramouli

Nikolaou

et al. 2021

Sensors

125

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Background: Cybersecurity is increasingly becoming a prominent concern among healthcare providers in adopting digital technologies for improving the quality of care delivered to patients. The recent reports on cyber attacks, such as ransomware and WannaCry, have brought to life the destructive nature of such attacks upon healthcare. In complement to cyberattacks, which have been targeted against the vulnerabilities of information technology (IT) infrastructures, a new form of cyber attack aims to exploit human vulnerabilities; such attacks are categorised as social engineering attacks. Following an increase in the frequency and ingenuity of attacks launched against hospitals and clinical environments with the intention of causing service disruption, there is a strong need to study the level of awareness programmes and training activities offered to the staff by healthcare organisations. Objective: The objective of this systematic review is to identify commonly encountered factors that cybersecurity postures of a healthcare organisation, resulting from the ignorance of cyber threat to healthcare. The systematic review aims to consolidate the current literature being reported upon human behaviour resulting in security gaps that mitigate the cyber defence strategy adopted by healthcare organisations. Additionally, the paper also reviews the organisational risk assessment methodology implemented and the policies being adopted to strengthen cybersecurity. Methods: The topic of cybersecurity within healthcare and the clinical environment has attracted the interest of several researchers, resulting in a broad range of literature. The inclusion criteria for the articles in the review stem from the scope of the five research questions identified. To this end, we conducted seven search queries across three repositories, namely (i) PubMed®/MED-LINE; (ii) Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL); and (iii) Web of Science (WoS), using key words related to cybersecurity awareness, training, organisation risk assessment methodologies, policies and recommendations adopted as counter measures within health care. These were restricted to around the last 12 years. Results: A total of 70 articles were selected to be included in the review, which addresses the complexity of cybersecurity measures adopted within the healthcare and clinical environments. The articles included in the review highlight the evolving nature of cybersecurity threats stemming from exploiting IT infrastructures to more advanced attacks launched with the intent of exploiting human vulnerability. A steady increase in the literature on the threat of phishing attacks evidences the growing threat of social engineering attacks. As a countermeasure, through the review, we identified articles that provide methodologies resulting from case studies to promote cybersecurity awareness among stakeholders. The articles included highlight the need to adopt cyber hygiene practices among healthcare professionals while accessing social media platforms, which forms an ideal test bed for the attackers to gain insight into the life of healthcare professionals. Additionally, the review also includes articles that present strategies adopted by healthcare organisations in countering the impact of social engineering attacks. The evaluation of the cybersecurity risk assessment of an organisation is another key area of study reported in the literature that recommends the organisation of European and international standards in countering social engineering attacks. Lastly, the review includes articles reporting on national case studies with an overview of the economic and societal impact of service disruptions encountered due to cyberattacks. Discussion: One of the limitations of the review is the subjective ranking of the authors associated to the relevance of literature to each of the research questions identified. We also acknowledge the limited amount of literature that focuses on human factors of cybersecurity in health care in general; therefore, the search queries were formulated using well-established cybersecurity related topics categorised according to the threats, risk assessment and organisational strategies reported in the literature.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Influence of Human Factors on Cyber Security within Healthcare Organisations: A Systematic Review

Nifakos

Chandramouli

Nikolaou

et al. 2021

Sensors

125

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The Role of IT Background for Metacognitive Accuracy, Confidence and Overestimation of Deep Fake Recognition Skills

Sütterlin

Lugo

Ask

et al. 2022

Augmented Cognition

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The emergence of synthetic media such as deep fakes is considered to be a disruptive technology shaping the fight against cybercrime as well as enabling political disinformation. Deep faked material exploits humans' interpersonal trust and is usually applied where technical solutions of deep fake authentication are not in place, unknown, or unaffordable. Improving the individual's ability to recognise deep fakes where they are not perfectly produced requires training and the incorporation of deep fake-based attacks into social engineering resilience training. Individualised or tailored approaches as part of cybersecurity awareness campaigns are superior to a one-size-fits-all approach, and need to identify persons in particular need for improvement. Research conducted in phishing simulations reported that persons with educational and/or professional background in information technology frequently underperform in social engineering simulations. In this study, we propose a method and metric to detect overconfident individuals in regards to deep fake recognition. The proposed overconfidence score flags individuals overestimating their performance and thus posing a previously unconsidered cybersecurity risk. In this study, and in line with comparable research from phishing simulations, individuals with IT background were particularly prone to overconfidence. We argue that this data-driven approach to identifying persons at risk enables educators to provide a more targeted education, evoke insight into own judgement deficiencies, and help to avoid the selfselection bias typical for voluntary participation.

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Cyber Social Engineering Kill Chain

Rodriguez

2022

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Human Cognition Through the Lens of Social Engineering Cyberattacks

Cited by 51 publications

References 119 publications

Influence of Human Factors on Cyber Security within Healthcare Organisations: A Systematic Review

Influence of Human Factors on Cyber Security within Healthcare Organisations: A Systematic Review

The Role of IT Background for Metacognitive Accuracy, Confidence and Overestimation of Deep Fake Recognition Skills

Cyber Social Engineering Kill Chain

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