Managing the loss of control over cyber identity

Professionals entering the information security field need new models to manage user reactions to the loss of control over their digital identities. Escalations in authentication technologies like behavioral blocks and biometric data breaches are reducing the user's control over the management of their digital identities. Simultaneously, users are becoming more digitally dependant regarding financial transactions, buying food, emotionally connecting with loved ones on social media, managing personal information, and writing personal documents. This research presents a tool to address this issue pulled from the fields of education, political science, psychology, and cyber security. It is combined as a set of models to be delivered as part of information security curricula. Recent analysis of brain scans and population behavior studies have suggested that when people feel their identity at risk and feel disempowered they will have a stronger disposition towards authoritarianism, desire for retribution, and a desire for simplistic solutions instead of acting with reasoned and adaptive responses. Indicators in other fields suggest that the way professionals and educators characterize incidents that threaten digital identity can habituate different types of societal attitudes about the Internet and institutional data usage. The model presented herein should help cyber security educators characterize user responds to digital identity threats, and provides a scale for evaluating those responses.