Date of Award

Spring 5-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

Program/Concentration

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Committee Director

C. Ariel Pinto

Committee Member

Holly Handley

Committee Member

Chunsheng Xin

Abstract

The scope of this study is the systemic risk of the role of humans in the risk of phishing. The relevance to engineering managers and systems engineers of the risks of phishing attacks is the theft of data which has significantly increased in the past couple of years. Phishing has become a systemic persistent threat to all internet users. Understanding the role of humans in phishing from a systemic perspective is a critical objective towards creating a strong defense against complex and manipulative phishing attacks. The systemic view of phishing concentrates on how phishing affects the entire organizational system, not just parts or individual components of a system. This study will address the systemic view of phishing which puts focus on how the entire organizational system performs and the purposeful tasks and goals to minimize phishing. This study will use a grounded theory approach to the following questions. First, how can the interaction between the human and the phishing lure be adjusted to mitigate the risk of phishing (i.e., from a systemic perspective)? Second, how can developing a systematic method help in mitigating the risk of phishing by reducing the likelihood of a successful attack? With the advanced persistent threat of phishing, this study anticipates assisting organizations in measuring how proficiently they are presently handling the risk of phishing and to suggest how the organizations can increase their proficiency and mitigate the risk of phishing.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/fe48-z245

ISBN

9798379738709

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