“Cyberattacks, cyber threats, and attitudes towards
cybersecurity policies”
Abstract of the study
This article is about how citizens react to policies implemented to prevent
cyberthreats and cybercrime. The abstract of this paper is a study that was done to find
out the attitudes towards policies implemented by the government to prevent cybercrime
done on civilians along with surveys. The hypothesis of this paper is “how will people
react to policies in cyberspace?”
The study was done on a selected number of civilians who were shown simulated news
reports of lethal and nonlethal cybercrime to learn about their attitudes towards
government intervention in cyberspace.
Principles
The study relates to the social science principles we have learned in class
because one of the most common principles we’ve learned about cybersecurity and how
it relates to social sciences is prevention. The study touched the topic of awareness,
and we’ve learned that a key principal in prevention is awareness. People simply being
aware of threats drastically decreases victimization in cybercrime. Another principal is a
false sense of security. People have a false sense of security when it comes to
cyberspace, often assuming that their anonymity protects them from threats. This study
touches on the fact that because the study was done to learn about people’s attitudes
towards regulations and policies in cyberspace, learning about their false sense of
security is a good way to gauge policies. The third principle that is related to this study
is ethics, the study touches on the principle of ethics because it considers people’s
perceptions of policies, because as stated in the beginning of this paper people often
have negative emotions towards these types of regulations. The data that resulted from
this study was mostly raw data along with a chart that linked the data with lines. Raw
data relies more on the reader’s understanding of the subject because it isn’t illustrated
with charts, but is still effective. This paper did a good job at informing the reader of the
information collected in the study.
Concepts
The article covered a few concepts we’ve learned in class, the one that was most
noticeable was what I mentioned earlier in the article review, which was the concept of
informing people in order to prevent cybercrime. The study was done to learn about

people’s perception of cybercrime, people being informed of threats can greatly affect
their perspective on policies in cyberspace. Another concept from class that this article
touched was the CIA, as the CIA being used as an infrastructure would be a really
important framework for how to handle policies. The only marginalized group in this
study was civilians themselves, because this study was done to better understand why
people would resist policies in cyberspace even though they are technically a
marginalized group that offenders want to target. This study will contribute to society
because better safety for the average citizen is a must, but naturally people resist
government intervention when they feel there is no need for it. Understanding their
attitudes towards it will better help people make policies to protect people.
Conclusion
This study was conducted to understand the average citizen’s views on policies
in cyberspace, and government intervention. People often resist government
intervention when they feel it is unnecessary. The study sought out to better understand
them in order to create policies by a study done on a selected amount of people.

References
Keren Snider, Ryan Shandler, Shay Zandani, Daphna Canetti, “Cyberattacks,
cyber threats, and attitudes toward cybersecurity policies.” 7 October
2021