Cyber Influence and Cognitive Threats

In the wake of fresh allegations that personality data from Facebook users have been illegally used to influence the outcome of the US general election and the Brexit vote, the debate over manipulation of social big data is gaining further momentum. This book addresses the social data privacy and data integrity vulnerabilities threatening the future of policy. Attackers exploit users’ trust, breach their privacy, undertake industrial espionage and disrupt critical infrastructure.

Cyber criminals are using a wide range of methods, which are continuously evolving and increasingly motivated by financial gain on industrial scale. On one hand machine learning is being integrated into many security solutions, so that the platform automatically learns, adjusts, and adapts to the ever-changing Internet threat environment. The cyber security industry, policymakers, law enforcement, public and private sector organizations are yet to fully realize the impact emerging AI capabilities have or will have on security. On the other hand researchers have addressed human behavior in online contexts for some time, though humans are still seen as the weakest link in cyber security chain. It is important that this gap is addressed.

Understanding human behavior that have emerged and influence over social platforms in cyber security is critical and is an acute issue in ensuring security in personal, professional and organisational settings.

This book covers a variety of topics and addresses different challenges that have emerged. It discusses changes in the ways in which it is possible to study various areas of cognitive applications that relate to decision-making, behavior and human interaction in relation to cyber security.

These new challenges include phenomena such as the growth of hacktivism, the proliferation of open source hacking tools and social media enabled social engineering strategies, which are worthy of attention.

This publication comprises of chapters, which address social influence, cognitive computing and analytics as well as digital psychology, and the opportunities offered by cyber researchers. Academics contributing to this edited volume represent a wide range of research areas: information systems, psychology, sociology, strategy, innovation, and others.