Privacy, Human Decision Processes

Presented by by Prof Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau
By 2015, roughly half the world population had access to the internet. The exponential expansion of cyberspace and the internet of things comes with unprecedented levels of globalisation, interactions, and “big” databases. Humans are more and more embedded in a meshwork of data and computers. It also raises uncharted security challenges. This talk will focus on cyber security risks towards information including threats to the confidentiality, availability, or integrity of information. While such threats may arise from technology failures or natural disasters, more often than not, they originate in human behaviour. People’s actions (or inactions) may be intention- al or accidental, planned or automatic, malevolent or pragmatic. To gain in- sight in those behaviours, we need to better understand how people think and make decisions in cyber environments. To this aim, I will argue that we need to go beyond the classical information-processing view of the human mind as a computer. I will introduce the systemic thinking model (SysTM), which conceives human thoughts and decisions as emerging from people’s interactions with their immediate environment in a system characterised by environmental affordances (i.e., action possibilities) and human motives and capabilities. I will conclude by providing examples of how SysTM could be leveraged to better understand the human element in cyber systems and mitigate against cyber security risks caused by human behaviour.

Transcript

1. PRIVACY, HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES, AND COGNITIVE INTERACTIVITY Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau Professor of organisational behaviour Head of the Decisions, Attitudes, Risk, & Thinking (DART) research group
2. COGNITIVE INTERACTIVITY Cognitive events emerge from the meshing of mental processing with the transformative actions of a thinking agent on her immediate environment Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (in press). Cognition beyond the Classical Information Processing Model: Cognitive Interactivity and the Systemic Thinking Model (SysTM). In Cowley, S., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (Eds.) Cognition beyond the Brain, 2nd Ed. Springer. Vallée-Tourangeau, G., Abadie, M., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2015). Interactivity fosters Bayesian reasoning without instruction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(3), 581–603. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0039161
3. We are in the midst of the information age. By The Opte Project [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
4. “If this is the age of information, then privacy is the issue of our times.” By Amit AKA proxygeek from Mysore, India (Pyramid) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Acquisti, A., Brandimarte, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2015). Privacy and human behavior in the age of information. Science, 347(6221), 509–514. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1465
5. What can provide adequate privacy protection in a digitally connected world? Sweeney, L. (2002). K-anonymity: A model for protecting privacy. International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, 10(05), 557–570. http://doi.org/10.1142/S0218488502001648
6. To better understand how behaviour may result in data breaches, we need to better understand behaviour. Liginlal, D., Sim, I., & Khansa, L. (2009). How significant is human error as a cause of privacy breaches? An empirical study and a framework for error management. Computers & Security, 28(3-4), 215–228. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2008.11.003 “Of the 1046 total privacy breach incidents in our compilation, human error accounted for about 67% (701) of the incidents and malicious acts accounted for the remaining 33%.
7. Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (in press). Cognition beyond the Classical Information Processing Model: Cognitive Interactivity and the Systemic Thinking Model (SysTM). In Cowley, S., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (Eds.) Cognition beyond the Brain, 2nd Ed. Springer.
8. Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (in press). Cognition beyond the Classical Information Processing Model: Cognitive Interactivity and the Systemic Thinking Model (SysTM). In Cowley, S., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (Eds.) Cognition beyond the Brain, 2nd Ed. Springer.
9. Stutzman, F., Gross, R., and Acquisti, A. (2012). Silent Listeners: The Evolution of Privacy and Disclosure on Facebook. Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality 4 (2), 7-41.
10. Deciding what information to disclose: A systemic thinking perspective Perception, executive control, processing Material presentation and physical processing Information disclosure Cognitive interactivity
11. Deciding to steal information: A systemic thinking perspective Perception, executive control, processing Material presentation and physical processing Information theft Cognitive interactivity
12. COGNITIVE INTERACTIVITY Cognitive events emerge from the meshing of mental processing with the transformative actions of a thinking agent on her immediate environment Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (in press). Cognition beyond the Classical Information Processing Model: Cognitive Interactivity and the Systemic Thinking Model (SysTM). In Cowley, S., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (Eds.) Cognition beyond the Brain, 2nd Ed. Springer. Vallée-Tourangeau, G., Abadie, M., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2015). Interactivity fosters Bayesian reasoning without instruction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(3), 581–603. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0039161