Developing and evaluating a five minute phishing awareness video

Confidence tricksters have always defrauded the unwary. The computer era has merely extended their range and made it possible for them to target anyone in the world who has an email address. Nowadays, they send phishing messages that are specially crafted to deceive. Improving user awareness has the potential to reduce their effectiveness. We have previously developed and empirically-validated phishing awareness programmes. Our programmes are specifically designed to neutralize common phish-related misconceptions and teach people how to detect phishes. Many companies and individuals are already using our programmes, but a persistent niggle has been the amount of time required to complete the awareness programme. This paper reports on how we responded by developing and evaluating a condensed phishing awareness video that delivered phishing awareness more efficiently. Having watched our video, participants in our evaluation were able to detect phishing messages significantly more reliably right after watching the video (compared to before watching the video). This ability was also demonstrated after a retention period of eight weeks after first watching the video

Gamification techniques for raising cyber security awareness

Due to the prevalence of online services in modern society, such as internet banking and social media, it is important for users to have an understanding of basic security measures in order to keep themselves safe online. However, users often do not know how to make their online interactions secure, which demonstrates an educational need in this area. Gamification has grown in popularity in recent years and has been used to teach people about a range of subjects. This paper presents an exploratory study investigating the use of gamification techniques to educate average users about password security, with the aim of raising overall security awareness. To explore the impact of such techniques, a role-playing quiz application (RPG) was developed for the Android platform to educate users about password security. Results gained from the work highlightedthat users enjoyed learning via the use of the password application, and felt they benefitted from the inclusion of gamification techniques. Future work seeks to expand the prototype into a full solution, covering a range of security awareness issues

Atomic-scale dissipation processes in dynamic force spectroscopy

A systematic distance-dependent measurement of the quasistatic tip-sample interactions reveals a hidden stochastic dissipative interaction of the atomic-scale contact in dynamic force microscopy. By comparison of experiment with detailed molecular dynamics simulations, we demonstrate that the infrequently observed hysteresis loops are attributed to the formation of atomic chains during tip retraction. These lead to a large magnitude of energy dissipation in a single cycle and dominate the average measured dissipation, while also leading to differences in the forces measured in static and dynamic force microscopy. This paper provides quantitative force measurements and insights into atomic-scale dissipation processes.Peer reviewe