Cyber attackers commonly operate in teams, which may process information collectively and thus, may be best understood when the team is treated as the unit of analysis. Future research in Oppositional Human Factors (OHF) should consider the impact of team-influencing and team-level biases and the impact that defensive interventions have on team cognition in general. Existing measurement approaches using team interactions may be well suited for studying red teams, and how OHF interventions impact cyber attackers.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AschS. E. (1952). Group forces in the modification and distortion of judgments. Social Psychology, 452, 112-117.
2.
BakerA. L.FitzhughS. M.HuangL.ForsterD. E.ScharineA.NeubauerCLemattaG.BhattiS.JohnsonC. J.KrausmanA.HolderE.SchaeferK. E.CookeN. J. (2021). Approaches for assessing communication in human-autonomy teams. Human-Intelligent Systems Integration, 3, 99-128.
3.
BuchlerN.RajivanP.MarusichL. R.LightnerL.GonzalezC. (2018). Sociometrics and observational assessment of teaming and leadership in a cyber security defense competition. Computers & Security, 73, 114-136.
4.
Bulanova-HristovaG.KasperK.OdinotG.VerhoevenM.PoolR.de PootC.WernerY.KordellL. (2016). Cyber-OC-Scope and manifestations in selected EU member states.
5.
CookeN. J.GormanJ. C. (2009). Interaction-based measures of cognitive systems. Jrnl. of Cognitive Eng. and Decision Making, 3(1), 27-46.
6.
CookeN. J.GormanJ. C.MyersC. W.DuranJ. L. (2013). Interactive team cognition. Cognitive Science, 37(2), 255-285.
7.
CranfordE. A.GonzalezC.AggarwalP.TambeM.CooneyS.LebiereC. “Towards a cognitive theory of cyber deception.“ Cognitive Science45, no. 7 (2021): e13013.
8.
DelineS.GuilletL.RauffetP.GuerinC. (2021). Team cognition in a cyber defense context: Focus on social support behaviors. Cognition, Technology & Work, 23(1), 51-63.
9.
EntinE. E.SerfatyD. (1999). Adaptive team coordination. Human Factors, 41(2), 312-325.
10.
Ferguson-WalterK. J.GutzwillerR. S.ScottD. D.JohnsonC. J. (2021). Oppositional human factors in cybersecurity: A preliminary analysis of affective states. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Workshop on Human-centric Software Engineering and Cyber Security (HACS).
11.
Ferguson-WalterK. J.LaFonD.ShadeT. (2017). Friend or Faux: Deception for Cyber Defense. Jrnl. of Information Warfare, 16(2), 28-42.
12.
Ferguson-WalterK. J.MajorM. M.JohnsonC. K.MuhlemanD. H. (2021). Examining the Efficacy of Decoy-based and Psychological Cyber Deception. In Proc. of 30th USENIX Security Symposium, 1127-1144.
13.
Ferguson-WalterK. J.MajorM.Van BruggenD.FugateS.GutzwillerR. S. (2019). The World (of CTF) is Not Enough Data: Lessons Learned from a Cyber Deception Experiment. In Proc. of 2019 IEEE 5th Intl. Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing, 346-353.
14.
Ferguson-WalterK. J.ShadeT.RogersA.TrumboM. C. S.NauerK. S.DivisK. M.JonesA.CombsA.AbbottR. G. (2019). The Tularosa study: An experimental design and implementation to quantify the effectiveness of cyber deception. In Proc. of the 52ndHawaii Intl. Conference on System Science (HICCS), 7273-7281.
15.
GibsonC. B.BuchlerN.HoffmanB.La FleurC.G. (2019). Participation shifts explain degree distributions in a human communications network. PloS One, 14(5), e0217240.
16.
GormanJ. C.CookeN. J.AmazeenP. G. (2010). Training adaptive teams. Human Factors, 52(2), 295-307.
17.
GormanJ. C.CookeN. J.KiekelP. A. (2004). Dynamical perspectives on team cognition. Proc. of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 48(3), 673-677.
18.
GormanJ. C.GrimmD. A.StevensR. H.GallowayT.Willemsen-DunlapA. M.HalpinD. J. (2020). Measuring real-time team cognition during team training. Human Factors, 62(5), 825-860.
19.
GranasenM.AnderssonD. (2016). Measuring team effectiveness in cyber- defense exercises: A cross-disciplinary case study. Cognition, Technology & Work, 18(1), 121-143.
20.
GrimmD.DemirM.GormanJ. C.CookeN. J. (2018). Systems level evaluation of resilience in human-autonomy teaming under degraded conditions. In 2018 IEEE Resilience Week (RWS), 124-130.
21.
GutzwillerR. S.Ferguson-WalterK. J.FugateS. J. (2019). Are cyber attackers thinking fast and slow? Exploratory analysis reveals evidence of decision-making biases in red teamers. In Proc. of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 63, 427-431.
22.
GutzwillerR. S.Ferguson-WalterK. J.FugateS.RogersA. (2018). “Oh, look, a butterfly!” A framework for distracting attackers to improve cyber defense. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 62, 272-276.
23.
GutzwillerR. S.FugateS.SawyerB. D.HancockP. A. (2015). The human factors of cyber network defense. In Proc. of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 59, 322-326.
24.
HutchinsE. M.CloppertM. J.AminR. M. (2011). Intelligence-driven computer network defense informed by analysis of adversary campaigns and intrusion kill chains. Leading Issues in Information Warfare & Security Research, 1(1), 80.
25.
JanisI. L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Houghton, Mifflin.
26.
JohnsonC. J.DemirM.McNeeseN. J.GormanJ. C.WolffA. T.CookeN. J. (2021). The impact of training on human-autonomy team communications and trust calibration. Human Factors, Advance online publication.
27.
JonesP. E.RoelofsmaP. H. M. P. (2000). The potential for social contextual and group biases in team decision-making: Biases, conditions and psychological mechanisms. Ergonomics, 43(8), 1129-1152.
28.
KerrN. L.MacCounR. J.KramerG. P. (1996). Bias in judgment: Comparing individuals and groups. Psychological Rev., 103(4), 687-791.
29.
KleinK. J.KozlowskiS. W. (2000). From micro to meso: Critical steps in conceptualizing and conducting multilevel research. Organizational Research Methods, 3(3), 211-236.
30.
LaneB. R.SalmonP. M.CherneyA.LaceyD.StantonN. A. (2019). Using the Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST) broken-links approach to understand vulnerabilities to disruption in a darknet market. Ergonomics, 62(9), 1134-1149.
31.
MathieuJ. E.HeffnerT. S.GoodwinG. F.SalasE.Cannon-BowersJ. A. (2000). The influence of shared mental models on team process and performance. Jrnl. of Applied Psychology, 85(2), 273-283.
32.
MathieuJ. E.LucianoM. M. (2019). Multilevel emergence in work collectives. In HumphreyS. E.LeBretonJ. M. (Eds.), The handbook of multilevel theory, measurement, and analysis (pp. 163-186). APA.
33.
McNeeseM.CookeN. J.D'AmicoA.EndsleyM. R.GonzalezC.RothE.SalasE. (2012). Perspectives on the role of cognition in cyber security. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 56, 268-271.
34.
MeyersC. A.PowersS. S.FaissolD. M. (2009). Taxonomies of cyber adversaries and attacks: A survey of incidents and approaches (Report # LLNL-TR-419041). Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
35.
RajivanP.CookeN. (2017). Impact of team collaboration on cybersecurity situational awareness. In: LiuP.JajodiaS.WangC. (eds) Theory and Models for Cyber Situation Awareness, 203-226. Springer, Cham.
36.
RajivanP.CookeN. J. (2018). Information-pooling bias in collaborative security incident correlation analysis. Human Factors, 60(5), 626-639.
37.
RobertsA. P.WebsterL. V.SalmonP. M.FlinR.SalasE.CookeN. J.ReadG. J.StantonN. A. (2021). State of science: Models and methods for understanding and enhancing teams and teamwork in complex sociotechnical systems. Ergonomics, 1-27.
38.
RossL.GreeneD.HouseP. (1977). The "false consensus effect": An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Jrnl of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279-301.
39.
SimonsonR. J.KeeblerJ. R.LessmillerM.RichardsT.LeeJ. C. (2020). Cybersecurity teamwork: A review of current practices and suggested improvements. In Proc. of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 64, 451-455.
40.
StantonN. A. (2014). Representing distributed cognition in complex systems: How a submarine returns to periscope depth. Ergonomics, 57(3), 403-418.
41.
StantonN. A. D.SalmonP. D.WalkerG. H. D. (2018). Systems thinking in practice: Applications of the event analysis of systemic teamwork method. CRC Press.
42.
StasserG.TitusW. (1985). Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion. Jrnl. of Personality and Social Psychology, 48(6), 1467-1478.
43.
StrangA. J.HorwoodS.BestC.FunkeG. J.KnottB. A.RussellS. M. (2012). Examining temporal regularity in categorical team communication using sample entropy. In Proc. of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 56, 473-477.
44.
TaylorD. M.DoriaJ. R. (1981). Self-serving and group-serving bias in attribution. The Jrnl. of Social Psychology, 113(2), 201-211.
45.
TolstonM. T.RileyM. A.MancusoV.FinomoreV.FunkeG. J. (2019). Beyond frequency counts: Novel conceptual recurrence analysis metrics to index semantic coordination in team communications. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 342-360.
46.
TverskyA.KahnemanD. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.
47.
WassermanS.FaustK. (1994). Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press.
48.
WilsonK. A.SalasE.PriestH. A.AndrewsD. (2007). Errors in the heat of battle: Taking a closer look at shared cognition breakdowns through teamwork. Human Factors, 49(2), 243-256.
49.
WiltshireT. J.ButnerJ. E.FioreS. M. (2018). Problem-solving phase transitions during team collaboration. Cognitive Science, 42(1), 129-167.