Media contributions
1Media contributions
Title When psychology meets cyber-security: lessons learned from the COCOON project Duration/Length/Size p.15 Country/Territory Netherlands Date 16/05/22 Description Domestic use of Internet-of-Things (IoT) is increasingly
popular and offers convenience, comfort, and home
security. IoT, however, is not without risks. One risk specific
to IoT is the cyber-physical assault.
IoT devices often can control some aspect of the physical
environment, and hence hacking of IoT can have adverse
physical consequences. Just imagine ransomware
preventing you from leaving the house or turn on the
bedroom lights while you are sleeping. The cyber-risks of
IoT also extend beyond the end-user, as for example when
devices are exploited for so-called Distributed Denial of
Service (DDOS) attacks to critical national infrastructure.
IoT security is mostly sought along the technological axis.
This makes sense given the premise of IoT as self-organizing,
self-configuring, and self-securing. However, technological
solutions alone are unlikely to suffice. According to
Consumenten-bond (2020), 1 out of 4 devices on the
Dutch market show severe security vulnerabilities and can
be hacked with little effort. Moreover, there is often no
guarantee that a device will receive security updates during
its full lifetime, especially with unsuccessful products.
In the Chistera 2017 project “COCOON: Emotion psychology
meets cyber-security”, we investigated the role of the end-user of domestic IoT in cyber security; bringing together
cyber-security experts—University of Greenwich and Reading
(UK) and ETH Zurich (CH)—and psychologists from Ghent
University (BEL) and TU/e (NL). The goals were to investigate
(a) the risks of IoT and how these are perceived by home
users, (b) their emotional responses to cyber-physical
assaults, and (c) their capacity to detect cyber-physical
assaults—thus recasting users as an integral part of the
security system.URL https://assets.tue.nl/fileadmin/ILI%20Magazines/ILI%20magazine%20mei%202022.pdf Persons Antal Haans, Nicole Huijts