For this article review, I chose an article from the Journal of Cybersecurity. The title of the article is,

“Development of a new ‘human cyber-resilience scale’. 

In this article, the author explains what happens after an individual has been attacked by a hacker. Did the

individuals have support while their cyber attack was happening? How did the attackers feel afterwards?

Did it change their perspectives of what they could have done differently? Did it make the individuals

aware of their surroundings? All of these questions were answered in this article. 

When someone gets hacked, they are stressed out. They are trying to remain calm and positive but it is

impossible when the clock is ticking and there are no results. These cyber attacks take weeks, even

months to figure out. Most companies are starting to focus development on cyber-resilience frameworks

(CRFs) .This framework is supposed to help an organization resist cyber attacks and recover swiftly from

an incident. They call it the wave analogy. This disruption is the main focus to help identify factors before

and after an event that can help mitigate or exacerbate the disruption. Some of the ways that

organizations can reduce cyber attacks were situational awareness, good governance, and good security

posture. The ways that they can have a swift recovery are ability to adapt, company’s market strength,

financial position, and social capital. 

When COVID-19 happened, households and individuals became easy targets. This happened because

everyone was teleworking. That means that individuals were using their home wifi or public wifi. Hackers

knew that everyone became vulnerable. Most of the victims that were targeted were less than 60 years

old. With individuals teleworking, they were constantly using the same password, which made them an

easy target. As you would think that teleworking individuals would have good hygiene such as proper

password protection, making regular updates to their networks, backup regularly, and adopt cyber

insurance. 

Pangallo measured individual resilience by using a number scale. There were eight core constructs, which

are consistently used in measuring resilience. The six internal traits are adaptation, self-efficacy, active

coping, positive emotion, hardiness, and mastery. The two external traits are supportive relationships and

a structured environment. They created a questionnaire that was completed by 151 people. There were

four scales. The four scales were the human cyber-resilience scale, security behavior intentions scale,

brief resilience scale, and the computer self-efficacy scale. Most individuals scored that they did not have

support from family nor friends. That result turned out to be -0.632. Then some individuals said that they

did not have support while dealing with the attack. That result turned out to be -0.625. This article

showed me that there is not a lot of support when someone is victimized by a cyber attack. They have to

patiently wait or just give up. 

While looking at the questionnaire results, the majority of the individuals did learn from a cyber attack.

They started to create different passwords, and utilized the two way authentication for extra security

safety. Once they received something saying that their password was compromised, they immediately

started changing their passwords. The focus should be balanced between being attacked and not being

attacked. Even though, policies and regulations are created to prevent cyber attacks. What are the

policies and regulations after the individual has been attacked?

References

Joinson, A. N., Dixon, M., Coventry, L., & Briggs, P. (2023). Development of a new ‘human cyber-resilience scale.’ Journal of Cybersecurity, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyad007