Psychophysiological Assessment of Acute Stress in Control Room Operators during Cyberattack Conditions

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Stress, from a medical perspective, is a state of mental tension or physiological and psychological strain caused by difficult situations, triggering neuroendocrine and autonomic responses aimed at maintaining homeostasis. However, individual stress responses vary significantly and can have a profound impact on both overall well-being and work outcomes. In process control rooms, different factors (e.g. management of change, faults, system design, etc.) pose a critical threat not only to system integrity but also to the human operators responsible for maintaining safety and facilitating system recovery. In the future, one of the most important critical factors for control room operators can be expected to be the presence of cyber-attacks. Such incidents impose acute psychological, cognitive, behavioural, and physiological demands on operators, potentially degrading decision-making, situational awareness, and operational efficiency. This paper examines the psychophysiological effects of acute stress experienced by control room operators during a simulated cyberattack scenario. Specifically, it investigates the psychological and physiological responses elicited under acute stress conditions and evaluates their impact on operator performance during cyber incident management. The stressor employed involves a controlled cyberattack scenario targeting operators within a simulated control room environment. Stress responses are assessed using a multimodal approach that includes objective performance measures, subjective participant reports, and physiological biomarkers such as heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), blood pressure (BP), and respiratory rate (RR). The findings aim to provide insight into stress-induced performance degradation and inform the development of effective stress assessment.