Christian Arevalo
Professor Yalpi
CYSE201s
27 March 2024
Article Review #2 Cybersecurity when working from home during COVID-19: considering the human factors.
Introduction
The abstract of the article describes the research being done and its purpose (Whitty et al., 2024). The article focuses on how cybersecurity habits change when a person is stuck in their home for work (Whitty et al., 2024). The introduction begins by explaining the COVID-19 pandemic (Whitty et al., 2024). Without this information, the reader may not know what the experiment is about (Whitty et al., 2024). The next section describes the cybersecurity habits before COVID-19 (Whitty et al., 2024). This is to compare the data sets (Whitty et al., 2024). Then the author adds the cyber risks included in the pandemic so that readers understand the researcher’s positions on the topic (Whitty et al., 2024). There are also points about human factors in cybersecurity (Whitty et al., 2024). The article wouldn’t be about an experiment if it didn’t include methods and procedures, so the author describes them in the middle of the article (Whitty et al., 2024). The last part of the article is the results (Whitty et al., 2024).
Analysis
The article relates to sociology greatly because it is a study of social change when a pandemic is put into effect (Whitty et al., 2024). This also leads to psychology because the researchers want to figure out what the thought process for dealing with the pandemic goes through the human mind (Whitty et al., 2024). History is another way this article relates to social sciences, but not by much (Whitty et al., 2024). It relates to the social sciences because there were ways people dealt with pandemics years ago, so researchers can see how people in the current day do it differently (Whitty et al., 2024).
The hypothesis of this article is to find the change in cybersecurity habits when stuck at home due to a pandemic (Whitty et al., 2024). The methods used in this research include the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is used to understand an individual’s life experiences (Whitty et al., 2024). The procedure for this research was first getting permission to run the experiment after that they had to gather participants for the experiment, and then during the experiment, they used IPA to observe the individuals (Whitty et al., 2024).
The results had five different themes (Whitty et al., 2024). The themes changed from transitioning from the office to home, the workspace at home, understanding cybersecurity, awareness and education, and digital limitations (Whitty et al., 2024). The behaviors within these themes differed between individuals (Whitty et al., 2024).
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs relates to this article because of the physiological needs (Whitty et al., 2024). Being stuck at home will potentially reduce these (Whitty et al., 2024). The psychology in the human mind might change in a way that makes the person feel more comfortable because they’re in their own house instead of a work environment (Whitty et al., 2024). Cyber victimization lowers because people in work environments are more aware of their habits because they don’t want their workplace to suffer from an attack (Whitty et al., 2024). This means that in the comfort of the home, people will think there is a lesser chance that they become a cyber victim (Whitty et al., 2024). This was a natural experiment because the researchers had no control over the pandemic (Whitty et al., 2024).
This article concerns ethical groups because some of their traditions might have changed due to the pandemic (Whitty et al., 2024). This article also concerns anyone who is struggling financially because if they can’t work due to the pandemic then they might suffer even more (Whitty et al., 2024).
A contribution of this article was to promote awareness of cybersecurity changes with the pandemic (Whitty et al., 2024). Another contribution of this article was figuring out the change in psychology when isolated at home (Whitty et al., 2024).
Conclusion
The pandemic lowered the awareness of workers cybersecurity senses because people got comfortable in their work environments (Whitty et al., 2024). People at home get lazier and make more mistakes which could also mean security mistakes (Whitty et al., 2024). This study showed us that we need to be more aware of cyber threats no matter the workspace (Whitty et al., 2024).
Works Cited
Whitty, M. T., Moustafa, N., & Grobler, M. (2024, January 24). Cybersecurity when working from home during COVID-19: Considering the human factors. OUP Academic. https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/10/1/tyae001/7588826