Decision-making and biases in cybersecurity capability development: Evidence from a simulation game experiment

• Published in: The journal of strategic information systems Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 66 - 82
• Main Authors: Jalali, Mohammad S., Siegel, Michael, Madnick, Stuart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier B.V 01-03-2019; Elsevier Science SA
• Subjects: Capability development; Cybersecurity; Decision making; Iterative methods; Simulation; Studies; Uncertainty; Decision-making; Capability development; Cybersecurity; Simulation
• ISSN: 0963-8687; 1873-1198
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jsis.2018.09.003

•Increasing cyber risks demand proactive decisions for cybersecurity development.•Significant delays exist in building capabilities for mitigating cyber incidents.•Management experience alone does not compensate for uncertainties of events.•Training is vital to learning about complexities and making proactive decisions.•Management flight simulators prove to be effective training tools.
We developed a simulation game to study the effectiveness of decision-makers in overcoming two complexities in building cybersecurity capabilities: potential delays in capability development; and uncertainties in predicting cyber incidents. Analyzing 1479 simulation runs, we compared the performances of a group of experienced professionals with those of an inexperienced control group. Experienced subjects did not understand the mechanisms of delays any better than inexperienced subjects; however, experienced subjects were better able to learn the need for proactive decision-making through an iterative process. Both groups exhibited similar errors when dealing with the uncertainty of cyber incidents. Our findings highlight the importance of training for decision-makers with a focus on systems thinking skills, and lay the groundwork for future research on uncovering mental biases about the complexities of cybersecurity.