Chapter 5
The Digital Security Continuum: Reputational Aspects of Online Threats Ignas Kalpokas* Abstract: Thus far, there is a tendency to analyse cyber-attacks against devices, infrastructure, and information as separate from reputational threats, such as fake news or other types of disinformation (or the release of truthful but negatively impactful information). Nevertheless, as argued in this chapter, such a distinction is not sustainable: both are, instead, best seen as part of the continuum. In order to better elucidate the connections, the chapter first establishes the definition of a cognitive attack – a deliberate attack on audience attitudes towards an organisation – and subsequently deals with the relationship between cognitive and cyber-attacks in the sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery of reputationally harmful content. Ultimately, it is concluded that such interrelationship is going to contribute to the growth of the reputational threat. Keywords: cognitive attack; cyber-attack; data; information.
1 Establishing definitions and distinctions Today, perhaps more than ever before, organisations are facing reputational threats aimed at undermining their reputations in the minds if strategic audiences. Since such attacks aim at altering the cognitive processes pertaining to the target organization, they are best conceptualised as cognitive attacks. A cognitive attack is to be defined here as an effort to either 1) affect attitudes, perceptions, and other mental processes to make an adversary make specific decisions in accordance with the attacker’s strategic aims or 2) negatively affect the perception of the victim in the eyes of key audiences (customers, business partners etc.). This effort includes sourcing, production, and supply of information. While the ‘information’ component is a feature that distinguishes cognitive attacks from other types of online threats (e.g. cybercrime) a tripartite distinction has to be made between three different facets of such information: the first element is data (usually, big data, as discussed below), which has *
Assoc. Prof. Dr., Department of Public Communication, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania, ignas.kalpokas@vdu.lt, and LCC International University, Department of International Relations and Development, Klaipeda, Lithuania, ikalpokas@lcc.lt
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