Emerging threats for the human element and countermeasures in current cyber security landscape

The chapter presents an overview of emerging issues in the psychology of human behaviour and the evolving nature of cyber threats. It reflects on the role of social engineering as the entry point of many sophisticated attacks and highlights the relevance of the human element as the starting point of implementing cyber security programmes in organisations as well as securing individual online behaviour. Issues associated with the emerging trends in human behaviour research and ethics are presented for further discussion. The chapter concludes with a set of open research questions warranting immediate academic attention to avoid the exponential growth of information breaches in the future.