Reflective fortification: a conceptual cybersecurity training framework for sustained resilience to persuasion-based cybercrimes

Persuasion techniques are a common tactic used by cybercriminals via social engineering to manipulate victims, making it essential that cybercrime awareness education equips users with the skills to identify and resist persuasion attempts. Current approaches to cybercrime awareness education tend to rely on risk-based and threat-focused conceptualizations that have limited effectiveness in developing users’ long-term resilience to persuasive techniques and may encourage avoidant online behaviors. This article conceptualizes a novel approach to cybercrime awareness – Reflective Fortification – informed by the authors’ experiences of developing a community-based cybercrime education initiative. The proposed model takes a holistic approach, supplementing risk- and threat-based approaches with proven methods of fostering resilience to persuasion, including Inoculation Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model, alongside developing digital critical literacy, emotional intelligence and digital citizenship. Additionally, it seeks to embed resilience to persuasion long-term by introducing an ongoing, dynamic personal vulnerability scanning and self-reflection phase to the whole model.