Where are Marginalized Communities in Cybersecurity Research?

Marginalized communities are disproportionately vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, but are rarely the focus of inquiry in cybersecurity research. In this paper, we systematically analyzed recent security, privacy, and cybersecurity publications to understand the frequency and nature of engagement with marginalized communities by reviewing papers across four different professional societies’ venues (ACM, IEEE, USENIX, and PoPETs) published in in the last two years. Of 2,170 papers, we find that only 0.2% (27) of papers engage with marginalization in any form, with the majority of papers (22) being observational studies, and only five that included an intervention to actively support a marginalized community. We discuss how cybersecurity research can make strides towards not only understanding but also actively supporting marginalized groups.