Human-centered specification exemplars for critical infrastructure environments.

Specification models of critical infrastructure focus on parts of a larger environment. However, to consider the security of critical infrastructure systems, we need approaches for modelling the sum of these parts; these include people and activities, as well as technology. This paper presents human-centered specification exemplars that capture the nuances associated with interactions between people, technology, and critical infrastructure environments. We describe requirements each exemplar needs to satisfy, and present preliminary results in developing and evaluating them

Assessing the impact of affective feedback on end-user security awareness

A lack of awareness regarding online security behaviour can leave users and their devices vulnerable to compromise. This paper highlights potential areas where users may fall victim to online attacks, and reviews existing tools developed to raise users’ awareness of security behaviour. An ongoing research project is described, which provides a combined monitoring solution and affective feedback system, designed to provide affective feedback on automatic detection of risky security behaviour within a web browser. Results gained from the research conclude an affective feedback mechanism in a browser-based environment, can promote general awareness of online security

Persona-Centred Information Security Awareness

Maintaining Information Security and protecting data assets remains a principal concern for businesses. Many data breaches continue to result from accidental, intentional or malicious human factors, leading to financial or reputational loss. One approach towards improving behaviours and culture is with the application of on-going awareness activities. This paper presents an approach for identifying security related human factors by incorporating personas into information security awareness design and implementation. The personas, which are grounded in empirical data, offer a useful method for identifying audience needs and security risks, enabling a tailored approach to business-specific awareness activities. As a means for integrating personas, we present six on-going steps that can be embedded into business-as-usual activities with 90-day cycles of awareness themes, and evaluate our approach with a case study business. Our findings suggest a persona-centred information security awareness approach has the capacity to adapt to the time and resource required for its implementation within the business, and offer a positive contribution towards reducing or mitigating Information Security risks through security awareness

Modeling security and privacy requirements: A use case-driven approach

Context: Modern internet-based services, ranging from food-delivery to home-caring, leverage the availability of multiple programmable devices to provide handy services tailored to end-user needs. These services are delivered through an ecosystem of device-specific software components and interfaces (e.g., mobile and wearable device applications). Since they often handle private information (e.g., location and health status), their security and privacy requirements are of crucial importance. Defining and analyzing those requirements is a significant challenge due to the multiple types of software components and devices integrated into software ecosystems. Each software component presents peculiarities that often depend on the context and the devices the component interact with, and that must be considered when dealing with security and privacy requirements. Objective: In this paper, we propose, apply, and assess a modeling method that supports the specification of security and privacy requirements in a structured and analyzable form. Our motivation is that, in many contexts, use cases are common practice for the elicitation of functional requirements and should also be adapted for describing security requirements. Method: We integrate an existing approach for modeling security and privacy requirements in terms of security threats, their mitigations, and their relations to use cases in a misuse case diagram. We introduce new security-related templates, i.e., a mitigation template and a misuse case template for specifying mitigation schemes and misuse case specifications in a structured and analyzable manner. Natural language processing can then be used to automatically report inconsistencies among artifacts and between the templates and specifications. Results: We successfully applied our approach to an industrial healthcare project and report lessons learned and results from structured interviews with engineers. Conclusion: Since our approach supports the precise specification and analysis of security threats, threat scenarios and their mitigations, it also supports decision making and the analysis of compliance to standards

Imparting Systems Engineering Experience via Interactive Fiction Serious Games

Serious games for education are becoming increasing popular. Interactive fiction games are some of the most popular in app stores and are also beginning to be heavily used in education to teach analysis and decision-making. Noting that it is difficult for systems engineers to experience all necessary situations which prepare them for the role of a chief engineer, in this paper, we explore the use of interactive fiction serious games to impart systems engineering experience and to teach systems engineering principles. The results of a cognitive viability, qualitative viability, and replayability analysis of 14 systems engineering serious games developed in the interactive fiction genre are presented. The analysis demonstrates that students with a systems engineering background are able to learn the Twine gaming engine and create a serious game aligned to the Apply level of Bloom’s Taxonomy which conveys a systems engineering experience and teaches a systems engineering principle within a four-week period of time. These quickly generated games cognitive, quality, and replayability scores indicate they provide some opportunity for high-level thinking, are of high quality, and with above average replayability, are likely to be played multiple times and/or recommended to others