{"title":"Cognitive Impacts of Explainable AI in Cybersecurity Incident Response: Challenges and Propositions","authors":"Chen Zhong, Alper Yayla","doi":"10.1007/s10796-025-10609-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Cybersecurity incident response (CSIR) is paramount for organizational resilience. At its core, analysts undertake a cognitively demanding process of data analytics to correlate data points, identify patterns, and synthesize diverse information. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions have been utilized to streamline CSIR workflows, notably with an increasing focus on explainable AI (XAI) to ensure transparency. However, XAI also poses challenges, requiring analysts to allocate additional time to process explanations. This study addresses the gap in understanding how AI and its explanations can be seamlessly integrated into CSIR workflows. Employing a multi-method approach, we first interviewed analysts to identify their cognitive challenges, interactions with AI, and expectations from XAI. In a subsequent case study, we investigated the evolution of analysts' needs for AI explanations throughout the investigative process. Our findings yield several key propositions for addressing the cognitive impacts of XAI in CSIR, aiming to enhance cognitive fit to reduce analysts' cognitive load during investigations.</p>","PeriodicalId":13610,"journal":{"name":"Information Systems Frontiers","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information Systems Frontiers","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-025-10609-y","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Cybersecurity incident response (CSIR) is paramount for organizational resilience. At its core, analysts undertake a cognitively demanding process of data analytics to correlate data points, identify patterns, and synthesize diverse information. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions have been utilized to streamline CSIR workflows, notably with an increasing focus on explainable AI (XAI) to ensure transparency. However, XAI also poses challenges, requiring analysts to allocate additional time to process explanations. This study addresses the gap in understanding how AI and its explanations can be seamlessly integrated into CSIR workflows. Employing a multi-method approach, we first interviewed analysts to identify their cognitive challenges, interactions with AI, and expectations from XAI. In a subsequent case study, we investigated the evolution of analysts' needs for AI explanations throughout the investigative process. Our findings yield several key propositions for addressing the cognitive impacts of XAI in CSIR, aiming to enhance cognitive fit to reduce analysts' cognitive load during investigations.
期刊介绍:
The interdisciplinary interfaces of Information Systems (IS) are fast emerging as defining areas of research and development in IS. These developments are largely due to the transformation of Information Technology (IT) towards networked worlds and its effects on global communications and economies. While these developments are shaping the way information is used in all forms of human enterprise, they are also setting the tone and pace of information systems of the future. The major advances in IT such as client/server systems, the Internet and the desktop/multimedia computing revolution, for example, have led to numerous important vistas of research and development with considerable practical impact and academic significance. While the industry seeks to develop high performance IS/IT solutions to a variety of contemporary information support needs, academia looks to extend the reach of IS technology into new application domains. Information Systems Frontiers (ISF) aims to provide a common forum of dissemination of frontline industrial developments of substantial academic value and pioneering academic research of significant practical impact.