Understanding Personality and Person-Specific Predictors of Cyber-Based Insider Threat

Abstract

The chapter aims to provide an opinion on major challenges for ongoing personality research on cyber security, especially in the area of insider threat. While research on the prevention and perpetuation of insider threat activity within cyberspace has grown substantially in the recent decade, there remain many unanswered challenges and unchartered territories of knowledge in the field. Specifically, compared to the amount of work done on algorithmic modelling approaches, much of the psychological data is scant and focuses on correlations between the so-called Big Five personality traits (i.e., extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness) or demographic variables (e.g., gender, age) with insider threat activity. Thus, the focus of this article is to articulate the major challenges for understanding insider threat in the context of cyber security, particularly from a personality and person-specific perspective that emphasises internal characteristics of the individual actor as explanations of actions and events.