Abstract

Cybersecurity exists as a sociotechnical system comprised of multiple individuals, working together to help understand, secure, and mitigate potential threats on their network. While much of the research in cybersecurity focuses on the technological aspects, over the last several years, human factors, and human-centered research, has begun to take a foothold, addressing issues of workload, decision making, and other forms of cognition that are critical elements of performance in these environments. Much of this research, however, focuses on the individual operator, paying little attention to the team, and thus ignoring a critical element of the cybersecurity environment. In order to develop a holistic understanding of the cognitive and collaborative work that occurs in cybersecurity environments, research must take a step back and expand their focus to account for team cognition and dynamics. In this chapter, we aim to provide an overview of issues with teamwork within the context of cybersecurity, discuss how previous team research can be leveraged, and provide opportunities for both research and practitioners moving forward. Specifically, this chapter focuses on team situation awareness, role definitions and staffing, hand-offs, and team performances measures. Building on these areas, we will discuss how emergent issues such as human-machine teaming and artificial intelligence may impact future cybersecurity environments.