Straight From the Human Factors Professionals’ Mouth: The Need to Teach Human Factors in Cybersecurity

Abstract

Colleges and universities are vital for integrating the human factors discipline in cybersecurity courses. Human errors, limitations, and weaknesses contribute to data breaches, ransomware attacks, and cyber-attacks. The cybersecurity community struggles to leverage human factors as a scientific discipline to eradicate human-related issues. Problems regarding the human element in cybersecurity require curricula focusing on the scientific aspects of human factors to teach human factors principles. As people and technology are increasingly interdependent, students interested in pursuing careers in technology must have a foundational understanding of people and their interactions with technology. While human factors is the discipline, human factors engineering is the work of leveraging human factors principles to improve the integration between humans and systems. Through various venues, educational initiatives, and research, academia can systematically link the science of human factors with cybersecurity. Colleges and universities are a centric node to educate industry, academia, and government leaders on the value of human factors engineering in cybersecurity. Through scholarly research, partnerships with government and industry, and a developing human factors curriculum, academia can influence business decision-makers to leverage human factors engineering with the same rigor and affinity for cybersecurity, software, and network engineering. This panel serves as a platform to increase awareness and the significance of integrating human factors courses into cybersecurity curricula that are taught by faculty members with proper credentials and industry experience.