Studies
13 studies · CSV
- Phishing reporting in organizations: What motivates employees to take action? Burda et al. (2025). Information & Computer Security The main reason employees report suspicious emails is wanting to protect and help the organization and coworkers, followed by responsibility, awareness of consequences, and feelings of insecurity. Reporters were more likely to report convincing, well-impersonated emails, showing they judge potential impact.
- How Experts Detect Phishing Scam Emails Wash (2020). Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW) Experts detect phishing in three stages: making sense of the email and noticing small discrepancies, becoming suspicious when something (usually a link asking for action) triggers the phishing explanation, then investigating and deleting or reporting. Training should build this sensemaking process, not just checklists.
- Moving from a ‘human-as-problem” to a ‘human-as-solution” cybersecurity mindset Zimmermann & Renaud (2019). International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 131, 169-187 A problematization analysis finds government, industry and hacker discourse treats humans as the problem, with controls designed to constrain them. The authors propose 'Cybersecurity, Differently', which assumes people are well-intentioned and builds on what contributes to positive outcomes and resilience.
- Predicting susceptibility to social influence in phishing emails Parsons et al. (2019). International Journal of Human-Computer Studies In a role-play study of 985 people, emails using consistency and reciprocity were most effective while scarcity and social proof were least effective. People who scored as susceptible to a given principle were usually more fooled by emails using it, and age, computer time, social-proof susceptibility and impulsivity predicted detection ability.
- Is the responsibilization of the cyber security risk reasonable and judicious? Renaud et al. (2018). Computers & Security, 78 Argues that governments shifting cyber risk onto individual citizens ('responsibilization'), by issuing advice and leaving consequences to them, is contributing to cybercrime's success. Proposes a more active risk-regulation regime instead.
- Who Provides Phishing Training? Facts, Stories, and People Like Me Wash & Cooper (2018). Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Facts-and-advice training beat no training only when presented by a security expert, while story-based training worked much better when told by a peer. Who delivers training can strongly change security outcomes.
- Cyber Security Awareness Campaigns: Why do they fail to change behaviour? Bada et al. (2015). International Conference on Cyber Security for Sustainable Society, 2015 (arXiv:1901.02672, posted 2019) Awareness campaigns fail when they only provide information: people must be able to understand and apply advice and be motivated to act, which requires attitude and intention change. Reviews persuasion techniques, including fear appeals, and lists factors behind campaign success or failure.
- Scaring and Bullying People into Security Won't Work Sasse (2015). IEEE Security & Privacy, 13(3), 80-83 Argues that people heed reliable, credible risk signals, but high false-positive security mechanisms teach users to ignore them. Instead of scaring, tricking or bullying users, security needs more accurate detection and less obstructive tools.
- Learning from “Shadow Security:” Why Understanding Non-Compliant Behaviors Provides the Basis for Effective Security Kirlappos et al. (2014). Workshop on Usable Security (USEC 2014) Beyond comply/not-comply, security-conscious employees who cannot follow policy build their own workarounds ('shadow security') that balance getting work done with managing risk. The authors recommend learning from these practices rather than stamping them out.
- Neutralization: New Insights into the Problem of Employee Information Systems Security Policy Violations Siponen & Vance (2010). MIS Quarterly, 34(3), 487-502 Employees' rationalizations for rule-breaking ('neutralization' techniques from criminology) explained intentions to violate security policy better than deterrence theory's sanctions. The authors argue policies should address these rationalizations.
- So long, and no thanks for the externalities: the rational rejection of security advice by users Herley (2009). Proceedings of the 2009 New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW '09) Argues that users ignoring security advice is economically rational: advice imposes large, constant effort costs while its benefits are often speculative. For example, the time cost of everyone checking URLs would dwarf all phishing losses.
- The compliance budget: managing security behaviour in organisations Beautement et al. (2008). Proceedings of the 2008 New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW '08) Employees decide whether to comply by weighing the personal costs and benefits of compliance against perceived benefit to the organization. Proposes the 'Compliance Budget': a finite store of goodwill that security demands draw down and that must be managed.
- Users are not the enemy Adams & Sasse (1999). Communications of the ACM, 42(12) Insecure password practices (e.g., writing passwords down, linking passwords) stemmed from memory overload and poorly designed policies, not user carelessness. Security departments that withheld information and treated users as a threat worsened motivation and compliance.