JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Cyber defense is reactive and slow. On average, the time-to-remedy is hundreds of times larger than the time-to-compromise. In response, Digital Twins (DTs) and particularly Human Digital Twins (HDTs) offer the capability of running massive simulations across multiple knowledge domains. Simulated results offer insights into adversaries' behaviors and tactics, resulting in better proactive cyber-defense strategies. For the first time, this paper solidifies the vision of DTs and HDTs for cybersecurity via the Cybonto conceptual framework proposal. The paper also contributes the Cybonto ontology to guide the developments of such HDTs. In particular, the ontology formally documented 108 constructs and thousands of cognitive-related paths based on 20 time-tested psychology theories. Finally, the paper applied 20 network centrality algorithms in ranking the constructs by their cognitive influences. The top 10 constructs call for extensions of current digital cognitive architectures such as: explicitly implementing more refined structures of Long-term Memory and Perception, putting a stronger focus on influential non-cognitive constructs such as Arousal, and creating new capabilities for simulating, reasoning about, and selecting circumstances.