07/14/2024
Social Cybersecurity: An Emerging National Security Requirement, published in Military Review, brings to light how social dynamics are utilized in tandem with cybersecurity. It highlights how social factors influence cybersecurity threats, emphasizing the need for understanding human behavior and how behavior can change with technology.
The ideas that the article describes builds upon the ideas of how technology and social behaviors are changing the course of war and how strategies are being made. With the changes in technology, social dynamics change with them and with that information becomes more important. The physical aspect of fighting a war would not be as important or even needed as technology takes this requirement away and can be the main focus of attack. As more strategies are developed, many states could manipulate networks and people to their benefit in order to gain information or change the tides of war in their favor. The different techniques can be utilized from any direction, and the article even mentions that “bots” can be used instead of actual humans, to spread misinformation or gain knowledge of their adversaries.
It is deemed that a new form of war will be used that utilizes information and psychological war. Much of this can be done through social engineering and information can be gained from those who are not ready internally, thus compromising much of their sensitive data that threats are looking to obtain. A main focus is how adversaries can manipulate people within the cyber field, or as mentioned in the article, “how to ‘hack’ other humans” using technology. As this becomes a growing concern, we must always look to prevent any vulnerabilities and maintain effective knowledge of the growing threat.
If we move forward into this world without seeing that people can be influenced over the network and cyber world, we are not doing our due diligence to mitigate threats from social engineering people to gain sensitive information. When new policies are developed to help the nation’s influence and maintain our security structure, threats can be held to a minimum and attacks would be recoverable and responded to in an efficient manner/
References
Beskow, D. M., & Carley, K. M. (2019, March). Social Cybersecurity an emerging national security requirement. Army University Press. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/Mar-Apr-2019/117-Cybersecurity/b/