The Stress as Adversarial Factor for Cyber Decision Making
David Sandoval Rodríguez-Bermejo, Jorge Maestre Vidal, Juan Tapiador · 2021
There are several factors that make cyber operations stressful, which include their complexity, unpredictability, and a continuum of decisions involving high risk and fast cost-benefit reasoning. These operations are subject to the reception of a large number of events to which the operator must learn (feedback) and respond appropriately in a timely manner, presenting particular cyber stressors able to trigger combat exhaustion battle fatigue. Their consequences will vary and evolve according to changes in the operational context, which makes them difficult to prevent, detect and mitigate. Among others, these attenuate the perception of a lack of self-efficacy, reduces the cyber decision-maker ability of distinguishing ally, neutral and hostile assets; or tend to wrongly perceive the decision cost (effort, time, self-protection, etc.) as much higher than the expected benefits. With the motivation of facilitating the understanding of the impact of the combat and operational stress at cyber operations, this paper discusses the related recent insights for cognitive dominance at decision making on the cyberspace.