The Science of Social Cyber-Security

Social Cyber-Security is an emerging scientific and engineering area. It is an applied field focused on the science to characterize, understand, and forecast cyber-mediated changes in human behavior and activity, and the related social, cultural, economic and political outcomes. From the engineering side it is concerned with building the cyber-infrastructure needed for society to persist in its essential character in a cyber-mediated information environment under changing conditions, in the presence of actual or imminent social cyber-threats. Research in social cyber-security has demonstrated that social media and personalized data assistants are critical technologies that affect the ways humans navigate this cyber-mediated information space, and the way they interact and engage in discussions. This impact is complex and is related to the human socio-cognitive response, engineered features of the technologies, and the policy/legal environment in which humans and technology interact. The changing nature of interaction in the cyber-mediated information environment are creating new scientific and policy challenges that those in social cyber-security must address. This talk will describe the nature, promise of, and challenges in social cyber-security. The role of network science and AI, as to of the core methodologies, in addressing these challenges is addressed. Illustrative examples will be drawn from areas such as disaster response, state stability, and the distribution of false information.