Overcoming the security quagmire: behavioural science and modern technology hold the key to solving the complex issue of law firm cyber security

While all industries that handle valuable data have been subject to increasing levels of cyber attack, there is a set of inter-related factors in the law firm cyber security ecosystem that makes such firms more susceptible to attack and also serves to prevent them from taking action to counteract attack vulnerability. As a result of the inter-related external and internal factors affecting law firm cyber security, the human element of firm security infrastructure has been neglected, thereby making humans, at once law firms’ greatest asset, their main cyber security weakness. 1There has been some movement of late, and regulators and clients alike are right to demand law firms do more to improve their cyber security posture.2 However, much of the scrutiny to which their conduct has been subjected has tended to overlook the complexities of the law firm cyber security quagmire, and unless these issues are addressed in the context of a potential solution, meaningful change is not While all industries that handle valuable data have been subject to increasing levels of cyber attack, there is a set of inter-related factors in the law firm cyber security ecosystem that makes such firms more susceptible to attack and also serves to prevent them from taking action to counteract attack vulnerability. As a result of the inter-related external and internal factors affecting law firm cyber security, the human element of firm security infrastructure has been neglected, thereby making humans, at once law firms’ greatest asset, their main cyber security weakness. 1There has been some movement of late, and regulators and clients alike are right to demand law firms do more to improve their cyber security posture.2 However, much of the scrutiny to which their conduct has been subjected has tended to overlook the complexities of the law firm cyber security quagmire, and unless these issues are addressed in the context of a potential solution, meaningful change is not While all industries that handle valuable data have been subject to increasing levels of cyber attack, there is a set of inter-related factors in the law firm cyber security ecosystem that makes such firms more susceptible to attack and also serves to prevent them from taking action to counteract attack vulnerability. As a result of the inter-related external and internal factors affecting law firm cyber security, the human element of firm security infrastructure has been neglected, thereby making humans, at once law firms’ greatest asset, their main cyber security weakness. 1There has been some movement of late, and regulators and clients alike are right to demand law firms do more to improve their cyber security posture.2 However, much of the scrutiny to which their conduct has been subjected has tended to overlook the complexities of the law firm cyber security quagmire, and unless these issues are addressed in the context of a potential solution, meaningful change is not likely. Part 1 of this paper outlines the current threat landscape and details the integral role of human error in successful cyber breaches before turning to discuss recent cyber security incidents involving law firms. In Part 2, we analyse elements of law firm short-termism and the underregulation of law firm cyber security conduct and how these, when combined, play a key role in shaping law firm cyber security posture. Finally, in Part 3 we outline a realistic solution, incorporating principles from behavioural science and modern technological developments

Bibliometric Assessment of Scientific Journals from DBs JCR Social Science Edition

The present paper is devoted to bibliometric analysis of scientific journals presented in JCR:SSE DBs in 1994-1998 period. For I&LS journals this periopd was extended to 2004. The idea of Standard impact factor (K) which is used for evaluation of journals was to compare the traditional impact factor (Ip) of a journal, as indicated in JCR DB, with the average impact factor of the corresponding field of knowledge (Ig). Some examples of the results of this study are given in tabular form

Identifying Overlapping and Hierarchical Thematic Structures in Networks of Scholarly Papers: A Comparison of Three Approaches

We implemented three recently proposed approaches to the identification of overlapping and hierarchical substructures in graphs and applied the corresponding algorithms to a network of 492 information-science papers coupled via their cited sources. The thematic substructures obtained and overlaps produced by the three hierarchical cluster algorithms were compared to a content-based categorisation, which we based on the interpretation of titles and keywords. We defined sets of papers dealing with three topics located on different levels of aggregation: h-index, webometrics, and bibliometrics. We identified these topics with branches in the dendrograms produced by the three cluster algorithms and compared the overlapping topics they detected with one another and with the three pre-defined paper sets. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of applying the three approaches to paper networks in research fields.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Using Course-Subject Co-Occurrence (CSCO) to Reveal the Structure of an Academic Discipline: A Framework to Evaluate Different Inputs of a Domain Map

This article proposes, exemplifies, and validates the use of course-subject co-occurrence (CSCO) data to generate topic maps of an academic discipline. A CSCO event is when two course-subjects are taught in the same academic year by the same teacher. 61,856 CSCO events were extracted from the 2010-11 directory of the American Association of Law Schools and used to visualize the structure of law school education in the United States. Different normalization, ordination (layout), and clustering algorithms were compared and the best performing algorithm of each type was used to generate the final map. Validation studies demonstrate that CSCO produces topic maps that are consistent with expert opinion and four other indicators of the topical similarity of law school course-subjects. This research is the first to use CSCO to produce a visualization of a domain. It is also the first to use an expanded, multi-part gold-standard to evaluate the validity of domain maps and the intermediate steps in their creation. It is suggested that the framework used herein may be adopted for other studies that compare different inputs of a domain map in order to empirically derive the best maps as measured against extrinsic sources of topical similarity (gold standards)

Does distance hinder the collaboration between Australian universities in the humanities, arts and social sciences?

Australia is a vast country with an average distance of 1911 km between its eight state capital cities. The quantitative impact of this distance on collaboration practices between Australian universities and between different types of Australian universities has not been examined previously and hence our knowledge about the spatial distribution effects, if any, on collaboration practices and opportunities is very limited. The aim of the study reported here was therefore to analyse the effect of distance on the collaboration activities of humanities, arts and social science scholars in Australia, using co-authorship as a proxy for collaboration. In order to do this, gravity models were developed to determine the distance effects on external collaboration between universities in relation to geographic region and institutional alliance of 25 Australian universities. Although distance was found to have a weak impact on external collaboration, the strength of the research publishing record within a university (internal collaboration) was found to be an important factor in determining external collaboration activity levels. This finding would suggest that increasing internal collaboration within universities could be an effective strategy to encourage external collaboration between universities. This strategy becomes even more effective for universities that are further away from each other. Establishing a hierarchical structure of different types of universities within a region can optimise the location advantage in the region to encourage knowledge exchange within that region. The stronger network could also attract more collaboration between networks

The space of scientific collaboration of 15 'old' and 10 'new' EU countries in the field of social sciences

The paper presents bibliometric analysis of scientific collaboration of 15 ‘old’ and 10 ‘new’ countries EU in the field of social sciences. Material for this analysis was drawn from DB SSCI 2002. The states as wholes are considered here as participants of collaboration. Coefficients of collaboration relatedness between pairs of countries form a space reflected in two tables, one for 15 ‘old’ EU member-states and in the other for 10’new’ EU member-states