pets4smes
Abstract
Cyber-attacks have become as commonplace as the Internet itself. Each year, industry
reports, media outlets and academic articles highlight this increased prevalence, spanning
both the amount and variety of attacks and cybercrimes. In this article, we seek to further
advance discussions on cyber threats, cognitive vulnerabilities and cyberpsychology
through a critical reflection on the social and psychological aspects related to cyberattacks. In particular, we are interested in understanding how members of the public
perceive and engage with risk and how they are impacted during and after a cyber-attack
has occurred. This research focuses on key cognitive issues relevant to comprehending
public reactions to malicious cyber events including risk perception, protection
motivation, culture, and attacker characteristics (e.g., attacker identity, target identity and
scale of attack). To consider the applicability of our findings, we investigate two
significant cyber-attacks over the last few years, namely the WannaCry attack of 2017
and the Lloyds Banking Group attack in the same year.
