New Project Investigates Cyberattacks on Swiss Organizations and Receives SNF Funding

The goal of the project “Understanding the Decision-Making of Experienced Incident Responders during Critical Cyberattacks on Swiss Organizations” at the ZHAW School of Management and Law is to understand the decisions experienced incident responders make during real-world cyber incidents, how they combine intuition and analytical thinking, and what clues they rely on in the process. “Cyberattacks pose a growing threat to organizations worldwide. Yet we still have an incomplete understanding of how organizations actually make decisions and respond to attacks in such situations,” explains Project Leader and ZHAW expert Prof. Nico Ebert.

The project uses the “Naturalistic Decision-Making” approach, which has proven effective in other high-risk fields such as firefighting and emergency medicine. To this end, detailed case studies of actual cyber incidents at Swiss organizations are being conducted. A consortium of field partners facilitates access to affected organizations and enables dialogue with experienced professionals. These include, among others, the International Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), the Healthcare Cyber Security Center (22 hospitals), the Financial Services Cyber Security Center (170 financial institutions), a network of CISOs, and the Network for Combating Digital Crime (NEDIK) of the cantonal police forces.