A Privacy-Preserving, Context-Aware, Insider Threat prevention and prediction model (PPCAITPP)

The insider threat problem is extremely challenging to address, as it is committed by insiders who are trusted and authorized to access the information resources of the organization. The problem is further complicated by the multifaceted nature of insiders, as human beings have various motivations and fluctuating behaviours. Additionally, typical monitoring systems may violate the privacy of insiders. Consequently, there is a need to consider a comprehensive approach to mitigate insider threats. This research presents a novel insider threat prevention and prediction model, combining several approaches, techniques and tools from the fields of computer science and criminology. The model is a Privacy- Preserving, Context-Aware, Insider Threat Prevention and Prediction model (PPCAITPP). The model is predicated on the Fraud Diamond (a theory from Criminology) which assumes there must be four elements present in order for a criminal to commit maleficence. The basic elements are pressure (i.e. motive), opportunity, ability (i.e. capability) and rationalization. According to the Fraud Diamond, malicious employees need to have a motive, opportunity and the capability to commit fraud. Additionally, criminals tend to rationalize their malicious actions in order for them to ease their cognitive dissonance towards maleficence. In order to mitigate the insider threat comprehensively, there is a need to consider all the elements of the Fraud Diamond because insider threat crime is also related to elements of the Fraud Diamond similar to crimes committed within the physical landscape. The model intends to act within context, which implies that when the model offers predictions about threats, it also reacts to prevent the threat from becoming a future threat instantaneously. To collect information about insiders for the purposes of prediction, there is a need to collect current information, as the motives and behaviours of humans are transient. Context-aware systems are used in the model to collect current information about insiders related to motive and ability as well as to determine whether insiders exploit any opportunity to commit a crime (i.e. entrapment). Furthermore, they are used to neutralize any rationalizations the insider may have via neutralization mitigation, thus preventing the insider from committing a future crime. However, the model collects private information and involves entrapment that will be deemed unethical. A model that does not preserve the privacy of insiders may cause them to feel they are not trusted, which in turn may affect their productivity in the workplace negatively. Hence, this thesis argues that an insider prediction model must be privacy-preserving in order to prevent further cybercrime. The model is not intended to be punitive but rather a strategy to prevent current insiders from being tempted to commit a crime in future. The model involves four major components: context awareness, opportunity facilitation, neutralization mitigation and privacy preservation. The model implements a context analyser to collect information related to an insider who may be motivated to commit a crime and his or her ability to implement an attack plan. The context analyser only collects meta-data such as search behaviour, file access, logins, use of keystrokes and linguistic features, excluding the content to preserve the privacy of insiders. The model also employs keystroke and linguistic features based on typing patterns to collect information about any change in an insider’s emotional and stress levels. This is indirectly related to the motivation to commit a cybercrime. Research demonstrates that most of the insiders who have committed a crime have experienced a negative emotion/pressure resulting from dissatisfaction with employment measures such as terminations, transfers without their consent or denial of a wage increase. However, there may also be personal problems such as a divorce. The typing pattern analyser and other resource usage behaviours aid in identifying an insider who may be motivated to commit a cybercrime based on his or her stress levels and emotions as well as the change in resource usage behaviour. The model does not identify the motive itself, but rather identifies those individuals who may be motivated to commit a crime by reviewing their computer-based actions. The model also assesses the capability of insiders to commit a planned attack based on their usage of computer applications and measuring their sophistication in terms of the range of knowledge, depth of knowledge and skill as well as assessing the number of systems errors and warnings generated while using the applications. The model will facilitate an opportunity to commit a crime by using honeypots to determine whether a motivated and capable insider will exploit any opportunity in the organization involving a criminal act. Based on the insider’s reaction to the opportunity presented via a honeypot, the model will deploy an implementation strategy based on neutralization mitigation. Neutralization mitigation is the process of nullifying the rationalizations that the insider may have had for committing the crime. All information about insiders will be anonymized to remove any identifiers for the purpose of preserving the privacy of insiders. The model also intends to identify any new behaviour that may result during the course of implementation. This research contributes to existing scientific knowledge in the insider threat domain and can be used as a point of departure for future researchers in the area. Organizations could use the model as a framework to design and develop a comprehensive security solution for insider threat problems. The model concept can also be integrated into existing information security systems that address the insider threat problemInformation ScienceD. Phil. (Information Systems

Human-brown hyaena relationships and the role of mountainous environments as refuges in a postcolonial landscape

Humans and brown hyaenas (Hyaena brunnea) frequently interact within a shifting landscape of conflict and cohabitation, yet the social and biological dimensions of these relationships, particularly in montane environments, are rarely studied. This interdisciplinary thesis investigates how attitudes and perceptions towards brown hyaenas vary between different socio-economic groups within a postcolonial framework, and how these perceptions relate to brown hyaena occupancy, density, spatial ecology, and diet. This study, which is based in and around the Soutpansberg Mountains, South Africa, uses interviews, participant observation, camera traps, GPS telemetry, and scat analysis. Members of three socio-economic groups ascribe acceptable behavioural and geographic expectations to predators. Violation of these expectations by predators strip power from people and reduce acceptance levels towards them. Regaining power and mimicking concepts of colonial domination over land are key themes in human-predator relationships. Although the brown hyaena’s elusive nature and people’s strong abhorrence towards leopards (Panthera pardus) partially protects hyaenas from attracting attention as a problem animal, anthropogenic threats still abound. The most important factor determining brown hyaena occupancy is avoiding high human activity. Despite anthropogenic risks and due to their large home ranges (95.04 km2 – 169.79 km2) and dietary adaptability, brown hyaenas occupy 79% of the area surveyed. Brown hyaenas have a varied diet, which includes 48 different species. All signs suggest food acquisition through scavenging. This finding is corroborated by a high overlap with leopard diet. With lower human activity and plentiful scavenging opportunities, mountains provide a safe haven for brown hyaenas. A robust brown hyaena density between 2.56 – 3.63 per 100 km2 occurs in the Soutpansberg Mountains. Recommendations to promote coexistence with hyaenas include greater education about brown hyaena ecology and their ecosystem services, non-lethal conflict mitigation, and the inclusion of people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in conservation

The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information

The United States government leaks like a sieve. Presidents denounce the constant flow of classified information to the media from unauthorized, anonymous sources. National security professionals decry the consequences. And yet the laws against leaking are almost never enforced. Throughout U.S. history, roughly a dozen criminal cases have been brought against suspected leakers. There is a dramatic disconnect between the way our laws and our leaders condemn leaking in the abstract and the way they condone it in practice. This Article challenges the standard account of that disconnect, which emphasizes the difficulties of apprehending and prosecuting offenders, and advances an alternative theory of leaking. The executive branch\u27s leakiness is often taken to be a sign of organizational failure. The Article argues it is better understood as an adaptive response to external liabilities (such as the mistrust generated by presidential secret keeping and media manipulation) and internal pathologies (such as overclassification and bureaucratic fragmentation) of the modern administrative state. The leak laws are so rarely enforced not only because it is hard to punish violators, but also because key institutional actors share overlapping interests in maintaining a permissive culture of classified information disclosures. Permissiveness does not entail anarchy, however, as a nuanced system of informal social controls has come to supplement, and all but supplant, the formal disciplinary scheme. In detailing these claims, the Article maps the rich sociology of governmental leak regulation and explores a range of implications for executive power, national security, democracy, and the rule of law

Sensing the Waterscape - Re-Assembling the Politics of Climate Change and Displacement in Bangkok, Thailand

The effects of climate change on human society and urban metropolises in the Global South, such as Bangkok, have been widely discussed in academic and policy circles. In the last few decades, debates on climate change and displacement have particularly captured the attention of the media, policymakers and academics. So-called “climate refugees” have advanced as the “human face of climate change”. Critically examining the literature on the relationship between climate change and displacement that either sees this relationship as deterministic (so-called Maximalist position) or complex (so-called Minimalist position), this dissertation seeks to reorient debates on climate change and displacement to consider the link between both compounds as an emerging assemblage. The dissertation argues that such a perspective allows for a more-than Western ontology, a nuanced engagement with urban spaces such as Bangkok, in which climate change and displacement begin to materialise and contribute to a political quest for open futures. Within this emerging assemblage, affective forces, human and non-human actors, the urban materiality of a fragmented waterscape shapes and influences the politics of climate change and displacement. Through an intra-urban comparative research design that utilises a range of qualitative and ethnographic methods (e.g. participant observations, semi-structured interviews, walk-along interviews), the emerging heterogeneous urban climate change and displacement assemblage is investigated. In three empirical chapters, the dissertation attends to the historical fragmentation of Bangkok’s waterscape and its connections to contemporary and future climate change and displacement; the 2011 inundation in which wide parts of the city were flooded, involving diverse topologies of displacement; and finally two urban struggles over the re-engineering of Bangkok’s waterscape, in which the political contestations that are at stake within the climate change and displacement assemblage are analysed and compared. The dissertation argues that through re-framing debates on climate change and migration through an assemblage approach, a more sensory, nuanced, and ultimately more complex understanding of the political nature of the relationship between climate change and displacement is advanced

Climate change and the livelihoods of elderly female headed households in Gutsa village Goromonzi district, Zimbabwe

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy , April 2017This study examines the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of female elderly headed households in Gutsa village, Murape Ward, in Goromonzi District of Mashonaland East province in Zimbabwe. It is based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork that I undertook for close to nineteen months in Gutsa village. The key questions that I sought to answer in this thesis were: How is local knowledge about weather and climate change constructed? What is the nature of contestations surrounding this knowledge, and in particular surrounding the attribution of climate change to particular causes or events? How are livelihoods organized in response to the impact of climate change? I examined elderly women heads of households' perceptions and understandings of weather and climate change, issues of conflict and consensus regarding attribution and causality of weather and climate, the concepts that are used to refer to climate change, elderly women’s struggles to make sense of, and respond to climate change and to organize livelihood activities in response to the ongoing impact of climate change. In order to answer my research questions I adopted the use of Participatory Rural Appraisal, participant observation, archival research, life-history interviews, narrative research and in-depth interviews as data gathering approaches. I focused on the situated experiences of ten elderly women heads of households in Gutsa village existing in a wider community. In doing so this thesis explored these women’s complex understandings and interpretations of weather and climate dynamics as well as the relationship between climate change and their multiple and competing responsibilities. The thesis also analyses the implications of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in the district, peri-urban development, resource commoditization and commercialization, rapidly shifting markets, changing property relations, social networks, livelihood opportunities, gender relations, changing household structure, the politics of local authority and governance and the dynamics of ecosystems and interspecies interaction. The thesis argues that there is a central vernacular climatological theory that is widely shared among the elderly as well as among other situated individuals in the village and the wider community.MT201

Climate change and poverty

Climate change and poverty offers a timely new perspective on the 'ecosocial' understanding of the causes, symptoms and solutions to poverty and applies this to recent developments across a number of areas, including fuel poverty, food poverty, housing, transport and air pollution

Process evaluation of the development of a community-based participatory intervention promoting positive masculinity and peace and safety: addressing interpersonal violence in a Western Cape community

Text in EnglishGiven the high rates of male homicides, victimisation and the perpetration of violence by men in South Africa, the prevention of interpersonal violence among males constitutes a major public health priority. The lack of effective strategies to address the onset and effects of exposure to violence foregrounds the need for innovative strategies to address this problem in South Africa. Within this context, this doctoral study’s primary research objective was to evaluate the processes and steps used to plan, design and develop a community-based violence prevention intervention that mobilised spiritual capacity and religious assets to promote positive forms of masculinity, and peace and safety. This doctoral research was part of a broader study entitled, ‘Spiritual Capacity and Religious Assets for Transforming Community Health by Mobilising Males for Peace and Safety’ (SCRATCHMAPS), which aimed to identify and mobilise spiritual capacity and religious assets, in particular communities in South Africa and the USA, in order to address interpersonal violence. This study was framed by a critical public health lens, and was guided by a Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) orientation and community engagement strategy throughout every step of the development of the intervention and the initial evaluation of the manual development process. The overall research design was a participatory process evaluation. Methods used for this process evaluation included community asset mapping, surveys, focus group discussions, research-based workshops, diary reflections, a photo-documentary, meeting minutes, process notes and participatory observations. The analysis of the multiple sets of data was conducted appropriately, relevant to the particular data collection methods pursued and the demands of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. Findings from this study confirm the utility and efficacy of using a critical public health framework enacted through CBPR for developing an intervention that addresses the complexity of violence. The results further demonstrated that a strength or asset-based, gender-sensitive approach, with men working alongside women, is conducive to promoting positive forms of masculinity to create safety and peace.PsychologyPh. D. (Psychology

Socio-cultural dimensions of farming, small farm households and conservation agriculture in Nyanga District, Zimbabwe

Thesis (PhD (Development Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2022.Conservation agriculture (CA) has been extensively promoted in Zimbabwe as a panacea to non-viable agricultural production, continual land degradation and shifting climates. However, the long-term adoption of the introduced technology has been varied and quite lethargic and has not yet entered into an exponential uptake phase despite more than two decades of research and development investments. There is extensive literature on barriers and constraints of CA adoption in Zimbabwe, but the impact of local socio-cultural factors (farmers’ prior experiences, farming practises, indigenous knowledge systems and values) on the adoption of this technology for rural farm households has largely been assumed. Improving understanding of socio-cultural factors that lead to dis‐adoption of this seemingly appropriate intervention is important to achieve sustained adoption and for ensuring long‐lasting impacts of agricultural development project interventions. Guided by an epistemological position, the study is designed as a single-site and in-depth inquiry grounded on people’s lived realities and experiences. Data was collected from Ward 30, Nyanga District (also referred to as the ward or Ward 30), through non-participant and participant observations, life history, extended visits and document reviews triangulated with key informant interviews. The study found that farming households in the study area face challenges such as uncertain weather conditions, infertile soils, soil erosion, weed pressure, high input costs among other challenges which warranted an intervention like CA. In addressing some of these challenges, farming households make use of conventional and other emerging farming practises to guide their farming. However, there is a discernible and significant relationship between these farming practises arrangements and the lacklustre reception to CA. Apart from farming practices, farming in the study area is guided by the supernatural but these local belief systems and culture also played a role in the unenthusiastic reception of CA technology in the area. Indigenous knowledge systems were also found to be influential in resisting CA changes that were undesirable and of little relevance at farm and community levels leading to its abandonment or outright rejection. The research also found that certain socio-cultural aspects that were missed in CA implementation led to the technology abandonment. Simultaneously, socio-cultural aspects that were incorporated in CA implementation strategy led to farmers adopting the technology as early adopters. However, the farmers disentangled and modified the CA package to suit their local conditions. When farmers eventually abandoned the technology, the trends show that CA is replaced by conventional practises. The study concluded that for CA and other agricultural development projects not to fall flat in Ward 30, socio-cultural factors need to be taken into account if small-scale farmers are to take up these farming methods successfully. This highlights a need to (a) collaboratively design agricultural programmes to better suit local needs and context with inclusive implementation arrangements; (b) emphasise climate resilience benefits of CA rather than economic benefits to manage rural farmers' expectations; (c) intensify multidisciplinary research that incorporates farmers' social, cultural and experiences to develop suitable and flexible CA packages.Anthropology and ArchaeologyPhD (Development Studies)Unrestricte

The Pursuit of Salvation. Community, Space, and Discipline in Early Medieval Monasticism

The seventh-century Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines (Someone’s Rule for Virgins), which was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the hagiographer of the Irish monk Columbanus, forms an ideal point of departure for writing a new history of the emergence of Western monasticism understood as a history of the individual and collective attempt to pursue eternal salvation. The book provides a critical edition and translation of the Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines and a roadmap for such a new history revolving around various aspects of monastic discipline, such as the agency of the community, the role of enclosure, authority and obedience, space and boundaries, confession and penance, sleep and silence, excommunication and expulsion