Cognitive security is the protection of human judgment, trust, and decision-making from manipulation. Instead of targeting only computers or networks, it targets the person using them: what they believe, how they prioritize, and whether they trust a message, image, or recommendation. Attackers may use disinformation, impersonation, deepfakes, deceptive interface cues, or AI-generated content to steer decisions without triggering a technical alert.
This matters because many cyber incidents succeed through people, not just code. A believable fake can cause unsafe approvals, bad incident responses, or the acceptance of poisoned data in training and simulation systems. Defenses include source verification, human oversight, red-teaming for influence tactics, and policies that force review of automated outputs. In practice, cognitive security helps organizations keep AI, training exercises, and alerts useful without letting manipulated inputs distort what operators learn or decide.