Understanding of Human Factors in Cybersecurity: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Cybersecurity is paramount for all public and private sectors for protecting their information systems, data, and digital assets from cyber-attacks; thus, relying on technology-based protections alone will not achieve this goal. This work examines the role of human factors in cybersecurity by looking at the top-tier conference on Human Factors in Cybersecurity over the past 6 years. A total of 24 articles were selected for the final analysis. Findings show that most of the authors used a quantitative method, where survey was the most used tool for collecting the data, and less attention has been paid to the theoretical research. Besides, three types of users were identified: university-level users, organizational-level users, and unspecified users. Culture is another less investigated aspect, and the samples were biased towards the western community. Moreover, 17 human factors are identified; human awareness, privacy perception, trust perception, behavior, and capability are the top five among them. Also, new insights and recommendations are presented.