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2020-11-20
Demjaha, A., Caulfield, T., Sasse, M. Angela, Pym, D..  2019.  2 Fast 2 Secure: A Case Study of Post-Breach Security Changes. 2019 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS PW). :192—201.
A security breach often makes companies react by changing their attitude and approach to security within the organization. This paper presents an in-depth case study of post-breach security changes made by a company and the consequences of those changes. We employ the principles of participatory action research and humble inquiry to conduct a long-term study with employee interviews while embedded in the organization's security division. Despite an extremely high level of financial investment in security, and consistent attention and involvement from the board, the interviews indicate a significant level of friction between employees and security. In the main themes that emerged from our data analysis, a number of factors shed light on the friction: fear of another breach leading to zero risk appetite, impossible security controls making non-compliance a norm, security theatre underminining the purpose of security policies, employees often trading-off security with productivity, and as such being treated as children in detention rather than employees trying to finish their paid jobs. This paper shows that post-breach security changes can be complex and sometimes risky due to emotions often being involved. Without an approach considerate of how humans and security interact, even with high financial investment, attempts to change an organization's security behaviour may be ineffective.
2020-02-24
Ahmadi-Assalemi, Gabriela, al-Khateeb, Haider M., Epiphaniou, Gregory, Cosson, Jon, Jahankhani, Hamid, Pillai, Prashant.  2019.  Federated Blockchain-Based Tracking and Liability Attribution Framework for Employees and Cyber-Physical Objects in a Smart Workplace. 2019 IEEE 12th International Conference on Global Security, Safety and Sustainability (ICGS3). :1–9.
The systematic integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) into the supply chain to increase operational efficiency and quality has also introduced new complexities to the threat landscape. The myriad of sensors could increase data collection capabilities for businesses to facilitate process automation aided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) but without adopting an appropriate Security-by-Design framework, threat detection and response are destined to fail. The emerging concept of Smart Workplace incorporates many CPS (e.g. Robots and Drones) to execute tasks alongside Employees both of which can be exploited as Insider Threats. We introduce and discuss forensic-readiness, liability attribution and the ability to track moving Smart SPS Objects to support modern Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) within a defence-in-depth strategy. We present a framework to facilitate the tracking of object behaviour within Smart Controlled Business Environments (SCBE) to support resilience by enabling proactive insider threat detection. Several components of the framework were piloted in a company to discuss a real-life case study and demonstrate anomaly detection and the emerging of behavioural patterns according to objects' movement with relation to their job role, workspace position and nearest entry or exit. The empirical data was collected from a Bluetooth-based Proximity Monitoring Solution. Furthermore, a key strength of the framework is a federated Blockchain (BC) model to achieve forensic-readiness by establishing a digital Chain-of-Custody (CoC) and a collaborative environment for CPS to qualify as Digital Witnesses (DW) to support post-incident investigations.
2020-01-21
Iriqat, Yousef Mohammad, Ahlan, Abd Rahman, Molok, Nurul Nuha Abdul.  2019.  Information Security Policy Perceived Compliance Among Staff in Palestine Universities: An Empirical Pilot Study. 2019 IEEE Jordan International Joint Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (JEEIT). :580–585.

In today's interconnected world, universities recognize the importance of protecting their information assets from internal and external threats. Being the possible insider threats to Information Security, employees are often coined as the weakest link. Both employees and organizations should be aware of this raising challenge. Understanding staff perception of compliance behaviour is critical for universities wanting to leverage their staff capabilities to mitigate Information Security risks. Therefore, this research seeks to get insights into staff perception based on factors adopted from several theories by using proposed constructs i.e. "perceived" practices/policies and "perceived" intention to comply. Drawing from the General Deterrence Theory, Protection Motivation Theory, Theory of Planned Behaviour and Information Reinforcement, within the context of Palestine universities, this paper integrates staff awareness of Information Security Policies (ISP) countermeasures as antecedents to ``perceived'' influencing factors (perceived sanctions, perceived rewards, perceived coping appraisal, and perceived information reinforcement). The empirical study is designed to follow a quantitative research approaches, use survey as a data collection method and questionnaires as the research instruments. Partial least squares structural equation modelling is used to inspect the reliability and validity of the measurement model and hypotheses testing for the structural model. The research covers ISP awareness among staff and seeks to assert that information security is the responsibility of all academic and administrative staff from all departments. Overall, our pilot study findings seem promising, and we found strong support for our theoretical model.