Date of Award

12-2024

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Science in Cybersecurity and Analytics

Department

Information and Decision Sciences

First Reader/Committee Chair

Canelon, Jesus

Abstract

Social engineering is a frequent attack used to steal information from victims. This attack has plagued businesses worldwide for many years and continues to get worse every year as it deals with the human aspect of cyber security, something often ignored in cyberspace. Humans have been deemed as the weakest link in cyber security. Previous researchers have taken it upon themselves to discover links between the human mind and social engineering. This graduate research paper was conducted on the foundation of these research papers, based on the Five Factor Model of Personalities (FFM) and susceptibility to social engineering. This research paper aims to answer the following questions: (Q1) What role does personality play in individuals' susceptibility to social engineering attacks? (Q2) How do individuals’ perceptions affect the results from past research regarding personality’s role in susceptibility to social engineering attacks? (3) What can be done to prevent these individuals from falling for these social engineering attacks?

Previous research papers display a positive correlation between personality and susceptibility to social engineering attacks. Past findings have a general consensus on the traits of extraversion, agreeableness, and openness leaning towards a higher susceptibility rate, while conscientiousness continues to show lower susceptibility. Neuroticism remains controversial as papers argue in favor of both sides of the spectrum. This paper used a qualitative study approach to gather data from previous papers, using Harris Cooper’s literature review taxonomy to discover appropriate data and a survey using the IPIP for personalities to test individuals. This survey is based on personal perception and does not perform any social engineering attacks; instead, it gives users scenario-based questions to answer. The survey results were analyzed using Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient.

The answers to the above questions are: (Q1) Personality positively correlates to personality and social engineering susceptibility, showing that conscientiousness traits make individuals less susceptible. In contrast, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion make them more susceptible, and neuroticism remains in the middle as a controversial topic. (Q2) Individual perceptions resulted in findings different from the general consensus from past research, showing that conscientiousness can lead to susceptibility, and extraversion was the opposite, leading to less susceptibility. The other three traits remained in the middle of the spectrum, displaying the effect of one’s perception. (Q3) From past research, targeted training has been suggested to be used within the context of each personality trait from the FFM. Individuals would need to be tested and then trained according to the results.

Download

  Contact Author

Share

COinS