SPIKE: Development of Social Phobia Intervention for Key Cybersecurity Exploit Mitigation

This project hosts workshops to co-design a trauma-informed research framework with refugee, asylum seeker communities, and parents of children with disabilities in and around London.

Social engineering, a key tool for cyber-attacks, manipulates individuals into compromising personal information often by mimicking trusted contacts or creating persuasive scenarios and constitutes a staggering 98% of all cybersecurity breaches. In the UK, over 7.78 million cyberattacks occurred making the country the second most affected globally. These attacks have profound implications for mental health, exacerbating social stress and creating significant emotional distress and severely traumatic experiences for victims. The increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) exacerbates this issue. AI-driven attacks can simulate individuals with striking realism, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate between legitimate and malicious interactions.

While existing research has extensively explored the general population's vulnerability to cyberattacks, it has largely overlooked the role of mental health needs, leaving critical gaps in understanding the susceptibility to digital threats. Social anxious individuals are potentially more vulnerable to social engineering attacks due to a preference for online communication [3], biased perception of AI reliability [2], and difficulties in detecting deceptions [1]. With the rapid advancement of AI technologies, these risks are poised to grow, necessitating a deeper understanding of how social anxiety intersects with cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The SPIKE project seeks to address this pressing need by combining interdisciplinary expertise and innovative research methodologies to understand better and mitigate these risks.