To Deceive or not Deceive: Unveiling The Adoption Determinants Of Defensive Cyber Deception in Norwegian Organizations
Abstract
Due to the prevailing threat landscape in Norway, it is imperative for organizations to safe-guard their infrastructures against cyber threats. One of the technologies that is advan-tageous against these threats is defensive cyber deception, which is an approach in cybersecurity that aims to be proactive, to interact with the attackers, trick them, deceive themand use this to the defenders advantage. This type of technology can help organizationsdefend against sophisticated threat actors that are able to avoid more traditional defensivemechanisms, such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) or Intrusion Prevention Systems(IPS). In order to aid the adoption of defensive cyber deception in Norway, we asked thequestion: "What affects the adoption of defensive cyber deception in organizations in Nor-way?". To answer this question, we utilized the Technology, Organization, and Environment(TOE) Framework to identity what factors affect an organization’s adoption of defensivecyber deception. Through our use of the framework, we identified eighteen different factorswhich affect an organization’s adoption of defensive cyber deception. These factors are theproduct of the empirical data analysis from eight different semi-structured interview withindividuals from six different organizations in Norway. The main theoretical implicationsof our research is the introduction of a TOE model for defensive cyber deception, focusingspecifically on organizations in Norway as well as contributing with a maturity estimatemodel for defensive cyber deception. For the practical implications of our research, we haveidentified seven different benefits that defensive cyber deception provides. We are also con-tributing to raising the awareness of defensive cyber deception in Norwegian research andwe hope that our TOE model can aid organizations that are considering adopting the tech-nology. We hope that these implications and contributions can act as a spark for both theadoption of defensive cyber deception in organizations as well as the start of a new wave forthe cyber security researchers within Norway.
Keywords: Cyber Security, Defensive Cyber Deception, TOE Framework, Adoption