Measuring the Human Factor of Cyber Security

Supplement: IEEE 2011 Conference on Technology for Homeland Security: Best Papers

ABSTRACT:
Awarded Best Paper, Cyber Security Track.
This paper investigates new methods to measure, quantify and evaluate the security posture of human organizations especially within large corporations and government agencies. Computer security is not just about technology and systems. It is also about the people who use those systems and how their vulnerable behaviors can lead to exploitation. We focus on measuring enterprise-level susceptibility to phishing attacks. Results of experiments conducted at Columbia University and the system used to conduct the experiments are presented that show how the system can also be effective for training users. We include a description of follow-on work that has been proposed to DHS that aims to measure and improve the security posture of government departments and agencies, as well as for comparing security postures of individual agencies against one another.

download the full issue pdf
Download the full issue pdf

Suggested Citation

Bowen, Brian M., Salvatore J. Stolfo, and Ramaswamy Devarajan. “Measuring the Human Factor of Cyber Security.” Homeland Security Affairs, IEEE 2011 Conference on Technology for Homeland Security: Best Papers (May 2012). https://www.hsaj.org/articles/216


This article was originally published at the URL https://www.hsaj.org/?article=0.5.2.

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