Northern Kentucky University
A Survey Study of Psybersecurity: An Emerging Topic and Research Area
Grade Level at Time of Presentation
Sophomore
Major
Computer Information Technology
Minor
Psychology
KY House District #
67
KY Senate District #
24
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
Ankur Chattopadhyay, PhD
Department
Department of Computer Science
Abstract
When studying cybersecurity, the emphasis is generally given to the protection of personal information and safeguarding of technology on which the information is stored. Cybersecurity attacks, which can occur in multiple forms, can seriously affect the involved stakeholders mentally, and this grave impact aspect tends to be underestimated. With the human mind being a significant attack target, psybersecurity has begun gaining prominence as an important field of study. In this survey research paper, we explore psybersecurity as an emerging interdisciplinary area within the human security domain of cybersecurity and conduct a detailed investigation of its causes plus effects. With psychiatric engineering gaining prominence as a new impactful attack vector, a psybersecurity attack (PSA) primarily targets the human mind. We study the relations between cybersecurity and cyberpsychology, as well as between psychiatric engineering (PE) and social engineering (SE) from an interdisciplinary perspective. We perform a unique analysis of both PE and SE as PSA, linking them to Cialdini's six principles and their associated elements, as causes for PSA. We then show how to connect these causal components of PSA to the eight cyberpsychology dimensions through a tabular map that we have developed. We also discuss the emergence of COVID driven PSA with a focus on the psybersecurity of online healthcare information (OHI) users, including potential ways to protect OHI users from rising psybersecurity threats. We conclude this survey study by looking at potential scope of future work in psybersecurity, including new research directions and open problems plus research questions.
A Survey Study of Psybersecurity: An Emerging Topic and Research Area
When studying cybersecurity, the emphasis is generally given to the protection of personal information and safeguarding of technology on which the information is stored. Cybersecurity attacks, which can occur in multiple forms, can seriously affect the involved stakeholders mentally, and this grave impact aspect tends to be underestimated. With the human mind being a significant attack target, psybersecurity has begun gaining prominence as an important field of study. In this survey research paper, we explore psybersecurity as an emerging interdisciplinary area within the human security domain of cybersecurity and conduct a detailed investigation of its causes plus effects. With psychiatric engineering gaining prominence as a new impactful attack vector, a psybersecurity attack (PSA) primarily targets the human mind. We study the relations between cybersecurity and cyberpsychology, as well as between psychiatric engineering (PE) and social engineering (SE) from an interdisciplinary perspective. We perform a unique analysis of both PE and SE as PSA, linking them to Cialdini's six principles and their associated elements, as causes for PSA. We then show how to connect these causal components of PSA to the eight cyberpsychology dimensions through a tabular map that we have developed. We also discuss the emergence of COVID driven PSA with a focus on the psybersecurity of online healthcare information (OHI) users, including potential ways to protect OHI users from rising psybersecurity threats. We conclude this survey study by looking at potential scope of future work in psybersecurity, including new research directions and open problems plus research questions.