"Stressed for a Bit? Then Don't Click It, Cybersecurity Experts Advise"
According to a study conducted by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), employees who experience a specific form of stress are more likely to fall victim to a phishing attack. While most, if not all, employees experience stress, scientists have identified a particular type of stress that indicates who is more likely to click on bogus content that could lead to malware and other cyber troubles. The work could help employees and their employers in bolstering cybersecurity defenses by identifying the indicators that a user is about to take a risky action. The results of the study involving 153 participants were recently published in the Journal of Information Warfare. Although the relatively small sample size hindered the researchers' ability to identify all of the relationships between the more than two dozen variables they examined, the relationship between stress and response to the simulated phishing email was statistically significant. This article continues to discuss the phishing psychology study that explores what makes workers vulnerable.