Högskolan i Skövde

his.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Phishing ecosystem: A Qualitative Analysis of Phishing Susceptibility in Employees Who Work from Home
University of Skövde, School of Informatics.
2022 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, work from home (WFH) has emerged as the new normal. Organizations continue to utilize some combination of telework and work from office (WFO) but tend to overlook the cybersecurity-related implications of such disruptive practices. Research examining cyberthreats in WFH scenarios has generally assessed the role of the human factor as the weakest link. On the other hand, the impact of different situational factors onemployees' susceptibility has been largely overlooked except for the physical environment. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the influence of situational factors on employees' susceptibility to phishing emails. Phishing is chosen as the cyberthreat of interest owing to its pervasiveness and associated costs. An exploratory research design is implemented to conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews with eight employees who have both WFO and WFH experience. Emergent data is interpreted using the thematic analysis method. Findings reveal that multiple situational influences such as physical environment, social surroundings, task definition, temporal perspective, and antecedent states positively affect employees susceptibility to phishing emails. The current study explains the documented trends by drawing upon literature and concludes that teleworking exacerbates workers' susceptibility to phishing threats as a function of the human-situation interaction. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. , p. 70
Keywords [en]
work from home, WFH, email phishing, employees, situationism, situational
National Category
Information Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:his:diva-22262OAI: oai:DiVA.org:his-22262DiVA, id: diva2:1736837
Subject / course
Informationsteknologi
Educational program
Privacy, Information and Cyber Security - Master's Programme 120 ECTS
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2023-02-14 Created: 2023-02-14 Last updated: 2023-02-14Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(742 kB)304 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 742 kBChecksum SHA-512
8bfd958a7aeb7c0eadbf188c7c14ab3c9a97f4df4f9707d141a4e54c97cf015fba2caa733129194bbbc3f9f0de0544b3a425adb35392aa8f908f4d2ca045dfbc
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
School of Informatics
Information Systems

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 304 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 730 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf