Assistant Professor

  206-543-8956
  prajivan@uw.edu
  AERB 141D

Background

Assistant Professor Rajivan joined the department in 2018. Prior to this appointment, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Dynamic Decision Making Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds the following degrees:

• Ph.D. in Human Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, 2014
• M.S. in Computing Studies, Arizona State University, 2011
• B.Tech. in Information Technology, Anna University, Chennai, India, 2007

Scholarly pursuits

Humans, just as much as technology, are at the crux of many of our cyber security challenges, as both the problem and the solution. Humans are the instigators (i.e., adversaries), the weakest links (i.e., end-users) and, the defenders who anticipate, plan, and execute responses to emerging threats (i.e., security analyst). Therefore, solutions to cyber security challenges must adequately address these different human dimensions of security.

Prashanth examines how human behavior affects information security and privacy to develop models of effective interventions that reduce the risk from attacks and promote safe behaviors online. His research aims to characterize adversarial behaviors, and strategies to inform incident response; measure teamwork and decision-making of security analysts to augment security defense performance; and, uncover biases in end-user decision-making that compromise security and privacy.

Prashanth's dissertation work was a finalist for the Human Factors Prize on Cyber Security in 2017. He received the Best Student Paper Award for his work on multi‐agent models of teamwork in cyber defense at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual conference in 2014. His professional activities include journal review for Computers in Human Behavior, Human Factors and Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making.

Select Publications

1. Rajivan, P., & Gonzalez, C. (2018). Creative Persuasion: A study on adversarial behaviors and strategies in phishing attacks. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 135. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00135
2. Curtis, S., Rajivan, P., Gonzalez, C., & Jones, D. (2018). Phishing attempts among the Dark Triad: Patterns of attack and vulnerability. Computers in Human behaviors, 87, 174-182.
3. Harding, Rajivan, P., Bertenthal, B., & Gonzalez, C. (2018, July). Human Decisions on Targeted and Non-Targeted Adversarial Samples. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
4. Rajivan, P., & Gonzalez, C. (2018). Human Factors of CyberSecurity. Human Factors & Ergonomics for the Gulf Cooperation Council: Processes, Technologies, & Practices. 85-105. Taylor & Francis.
5. Rajivan, P., & Cooke, N. J. (2018). Information Pooling Bias in Collaborative Security Incident Correlation Analysis. Human Factors, 60(5), 626-639.
6. Buchler, N., Rajivan, P., Marusich, L., Lightner, L., & Gonzalez, C. (2018). Sociometrics and Observational Assessment of Teaming and Leadership in a Cyber Security Defense Competition. Journal of Computer & Security, 73, 114-136.
7. Rajivan, P., Moriano, P., Kelley, T., & Camp, L. J. (2017). Factors in an end user security expertise Information & Computer Security, 25(2), 190-205.
8. Rajivan, P., & Cooke, N. J., (2017). On the Impact of Team Collaboration on Cybersecurity Situational Awareness. Theory and Models for Cyber Situation Awareness. Springer
9. Rajivan, P., Jannsen, M., & Cooke, N.J. (2013). Agent Based Model of Cyber Defense Analyst Team. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. 57, 314-318. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.
10. Rajivan, P., Champion, M., Cooke, N. J., Jariwala, S., Dube, G., & Buchanan, V. (2013). Effects Teamwork versus Group Work on Signal Detection in Cyber Defense Teams. In Foundations of Augmented Cognition (pp. 172-180). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.