Gaps and opportunities in situational awareness for cybersecurity

Demand is present among security practitioners for improving cyber situational awareness (SA), but capability and assessment have not risen to match. SA is an integral component of cybersecurity for everyone from individuals to business to response teams and threat exchanges. In this Field Note, we highlight existing research and our field observations, a recent review of cyber SA research literature, and call upon the research community to help address three research problems in situational awareness for cybersecurity. The gaps suggest the need to (1) understand what cyber SA is from the human operators' perspectives, then (2) measure it so that (3) the community can learn whether SA makes a difference in meaningful ways to cybersecurity, and whether methods, technology, or other solutions would improve SA and thus, improve those outcomes.