Improving Cybersecurity Behaviors: A Proposal for Analyzing Four Types of Phishing Training

Phishing is an attack on organizational data that involves employees. In order to prepare for these attacks some safeguards can be put into place, but ultimately employees need to be trained in how to identify and respond to phishing attacks. There are a number of different methods that can be used for employee phishing training, but are these methods effective? This proposal presents a plan to analyze the effectiveness of four different types of organizational phishing training in order to determine which types of phishing training methods are effective

Enhancing Key Digital Literacy Skills: Information Privacy, Information Security, and Copyright/Intellectual Property

Key Messages Background Knowledge and skills in the areas of information security, information privacy, and copyright/intellectual property rights and protection are of key importance for organizational and individual success in an evolving society and labour market in which information is a core resource. Organizations require skilled and knowledgeable professionals who understand risks and responsibilities related to the management of information privacy, information security, and copyright/intellectual property. Professionals with this expertise can assist organizations to ensure that they and their employees meet requirements for the privacy and security of information in their care and control, and in order to ensure that neither the organization nor its employees contravene copyright provisions in their use of information. Failure to meet any of these responsibilities can expose the organization to reputational harm, legal action and/or financial loss. Context Inadequate or inappropriate information management practices of individual employees are at the root of organizational vulnerabilities with respect to information privacy, information security, and information ownership issues. Users demonstrate inadequate skills and knowledge coupled with inappropriate practices in these areas, and similar gaps at the organizational level are also widely documented. National and international regulatory frameworks governing information privacy, information security, and copyright/intellectual property are complex and in constant flux, placing additional burden on organizations to keep abreast of relevant regulatory and legal responsibilities. Governance and risk management related to information privacy, security, and ownership are critical to many job categories, including the emerging areas of information and knowledge management. There is an increasing need for skilled and knowledgeable individuals to fill organizational roles related to information management, with particular growth in these areas within the past 10 years. Our analysis of current job postings in Ontario supports the demand for skills and knowledge in these areas. Key Competencies We have developed a set of key competencies across a range of areas that responds to these needs by providing a blueprint for the training of information managers prepared for leadership and strategic positions. These competencies are identified in the full report. Competency areas include: conceptual foundations risk assessment tools and techniques for threat responses communications contract negotiation and compliance evaluation and assessment human resources management organizational knowledge management planning; policy awareness and compliance policy development project managemen

Tutorial and Critical Analysis of Phishing Websites Methods

The Internet has become an essential component of our everyday social and financial activities. Internet is not important for individual users only but also for organizations, because organizations that offer online trading can achieve a competitive edge by serving worldwide clients. Internet facilitates reaching customers all over the globe without any market place restrictions and with effective use of e-commerce. As a result, the number of customers who rely on the Internet to perform procurements is increasing dramatically. Hundreds of millions of dollars are transferred through the Internet every day. This amount of money was tempting the fraudsters to carry out their fraudulent operations. Hence, Internet users may be vulnerable to different types of web threats, which may cause financial damages, identity theft, loss of private information, brand reputation damage and loss of customers’ confidence in e-commerce and online banking. Therefore, suitability of the Internet for commercial transactions becomes doubtful. Phishing is considered a form of web threats that is defined as the art of impersonating a website of an honest enterprise aiming to obtain user’s confidential credentials such as usernames, passwords and social security numbers. In this article, the phishing phenomena will be discussed in detail. In addition, we present a survey of the state of the art research on such attack. Moreover, we aim to recognize the up-to-date developments in phishing and its precautionary measures and provide a comprehensive study and evaluation of these researches to realize the gap that is still predominating in this area. This research will mostly focus on the web based phishing detection methods rather than email based detection methods

Desarrollo de sistema de análisis automático de phishing

La tecnología avanza rápido y la evolución de Internet sigue en pleno apogeo. La red brinda cientos de oportunidades a los ciberdelincuentes para que, a través de diferentes técnicas, cometan actividades ilícitas con las que robar nuestra información más sensible como datos bancarios, credenciales, u otros datos personales. La ciberseguridad es un sector dentro de la informática que tiene cada vez más relevancia y debe estar constantemente alerta para poder combatir los cientos de fraudes online que se propagan diariamente por la red. El fraude digital más usual es el phishing, el cual consiste en suplantar la identidad de una persona o una empresa, engañando a los usuarios para sustraer sus datos. Hoy en día, se aplican distintas técnicas para combatir el phishing. Dado que el medio más utilizado para propagarlo es el correo electrónico que utiliza el protocolo SMTP, que presenta deficiencias de seguridad, se emplea el protocolo DMARC como complemento, que integra los protocolos SPF y DKIM, securizando la comunicación, reduciendo así el impacto del phishing. Adicionalmente, también ayuda a identificar numerosos casos de phishing la utilización de la cabecera “referer” del protocolo HTTP, la cual permite detectar redireccionamientos de páginas web fraudulentas a los dominios legítimos. En este trabajo se ha planteado una solución basada en una arquitectura software con capacidad de ser implementada en cualquier equipo o máquina, compuesta de dos plataformas (un frontal web y una API) con la que poder interactuar con ella. El fin principal se basa en analizar páginas web a partir de sus recursos, a los que se les aplica un tipo de función hash para obtener un identificador único de cada uno de ellos con el propósito de compararlos con los almacenados en la base de datos. Para almacenar información en la base de datos, el software permite agregar información sobre los recursos de una página web, tanto legítima como no legítima, que ayude a posteriori en los análisis de las URL sospechosas, pudiéndose visualizar también la información de una compañía contenida en la base de datos. Dispone además, de un algoritmo de “matches” que hace referencia a la relevancia o importancia de un recurso web sobre los demá

A framework to mitigate phishing threats

We live today in the information age with users being able to access and share information freely by using both personal computers and their handheld devices. This, in turn, has been made possible by the Internet. However, this poses security risks as attempts are made to use this same environment in order to compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for users and organisations to protect their information resources from agents posing a security threat. Organisations typically spend large amounts of money as well as dedicating resources to improve their technological defences against general security threats. However, the agents posing these threats are adopting social engineering techniques in order to bypass the technical measures which organisations are putting in place. These social engineering techniques are often effective because they target human behaviour, something which the majority of researchers believe is a far easier alternative than hacking information systems. As such, phishing effectively makes use of a combination of social engineering techniques which involve crafty technical emails and website designs which gain the trust of their victims. Within an organisational context, there are a number of areas which phishers exploit. These areas include human factors, organisational aspects and technological controls. Ironically, these same areas serve simultaneously as security measures against phishing attacks. However, each of these three areas mentioned above are characterised by gaps which arise as a result of human involvement. As a result, the current approach to mitigating phishing threats comprises a single-layer defence model only. However, this study proposes a holistic model which integrates each of these three areas by strengthening the human element in each of these areas by means of a security awareness, training and education programme

Ascertaining the Relationship between Security Awareness and the Security Behavior of Individuals

Security threats caused by the inappropriate actions of the user continue to be a significant security problem within any organization. The purpose of this study was to continue the efforts of Katz by assessing the security behavior and practices of working professionals. Katz conducted a study that assessed whether the faculty and staff at Armstrong Atlantic State University had been performing the simple everyday practices and behavior necessary to avert insider threats to information security. Critical in understanding human behavior is in knowing how behavior varies across different groups or demographics. Because a user\u27s behavior can be influenced by demographic groups, this study adapted Katz\u27s study by examining the influence on the security behavior of four demographic groups identified by gender, age, education, and occupation. Like Katz, this study used a 5-point Likert scale quantitative self-administered, closed-ended questionnaire to assess the participants\u27 security practices and behaviors. The questionnaire was developed in two sections: Section 1 used a binary scale to gather the participants\u27 demographics data while Section 2 used a 5-point Likert scale to measure the participants\u27 security behaviors. The sample population was derived from working professionals at the General Dynamic and Program Manager Advanced Amphibious Assault (GD & PM AAA) Facility in Woodbridge, Virginia. The total population at PM AAA Office was 288, of which 87 or 30% completed the survey. Results of the demographic survey indicate that (a) women were more security aware than their male counterparts, (b) younger participants were more security aware than their older counterparts, (c) participants who did not attend college were more security aware than their college-educated counterparts, and (d) participants in nontechnical positions were more security aware than their counterparts in technical positions. The results indicate that a relation exists between the participants\u27 security behaviors and their levels of security awareness