Human Factors in Cybersecurity

Abstract

Over recent years, the extensive development of information technology has dramatically advanced the way that people use the internet. The fast growth of the internet of things and mobile crowdsensing applications raise challenging security and privacy issues for the society. More often than before, malicious attackers exploit human vulnerability as the weakest link to launch cyberattacks and conduct fraudulent online activities. How to profile users' daily behavior becomes an essential component for identifying users' vulnerable/malicious level and predicting the potential cyber threats. In this chapter, the authors discuss human factors and their related issues in cyber security and privacy. Three categories of human behaviors—desktop behavior, mobile behavior, and online behavior—and their corresponding security and privacy issues are demonstrated in detail to estimate the vulnerabilities of internet users. Some future directions related to human-factor based security and privacy issues are proposed at the end of this chapter.