Toward Human Digital Twins for Cybersecurity Simulations on the Metaverse: Ontological and Network Science Approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Cyber defense is reactive and slow. On average, the time-to-remedy is hundreds of times larger than the time-to-compromise. In response, Human Digital Twins (HDTs) offer the capability of running massive simulations across multiple domains on the Metaverse. Simulated results may predict adversaries' behaviors and tactics, leading to more proactive cyber defense strategies. However, current HDTs’ cognitive architectures are underdeveloped for such use. Objective This paper aims to make a case for extending the current digital cognitive architectures as the first step toward more robust HDTs that are suitable for realistic Metaverse cybersecurity simulations. Methods This study formally documented 108 psychology constructs and thousands of related paths based on 20 time-tested psychology theories, all of which were packaged as Cybonto—a novel ontology. Then, this study applied 20 network science centrality algorithms in ranking the Cybonto psychology constructs by their influences. Results Out of 108 psychology constructs, the top 10 are Behavior, Arousal, Goals, Perception, Self-efficacy, Circumstances, Evaluating, Behavior-Controllability, Knowledge, and Intentional Modality. In this list, only Behaviors, Goals, Perception, Evaluating, and Knowledge are parts of existing digital cognitive architectures. Notably, some of the constructs are not explicitly implemented. Early usability tests demonstrate that Cybonto can also be useful for immediate uses such as manual analysis of hackers’ behaviors and automatic analysis of behavioral cybersecurity knowledge texts. Conclusions The results call for specific extensions of current digital cognitive architectures such as explicitly implementing more refined structures of Long-term Memory and Perception, placing a stronger focus on noncognitive yet influential constructs such as Arousal, and creating new capabilities for simulating, reasoning about, and selecting circumstances.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".