While the creation of a strong security culture has been researched and discussed for decades, it continues to elude many businesses. Part of the challenge faced is distilling pertinent, recent academic findings and research into useful guidance. In this article, we aim to tackle this issue by conducting a state-of-the-art study into organisational cyber security culture research. This work investigates four questions, including how cyber security culture is defined, what factors are essential to building and maintaining such a culture, the frameworks proposed to cultivate a security culture and the metrics suggested to assess it. Through the application of the PRISMA systematic literature review technique, we identify and analyse 58 research articles from the last 10 years (2010-2020). Our findings demonstrate that while there have been notable changes in the use of terms (e.g., information security culture and cyber security culture), many of the most influential factors across papers are similar. Top management support, policy and procedures, and awareness for instance, are critical in engendering cyber security culture. Many of the frameworks reviewed revealed common foundations, with organisational culture playing a substantial role in crafting appropriate cyber security culture models. Questionnaires and surveys are the most used tool to measure cyber security culture, but there are also concerns as to whether more dynamic measures are needed. For practitioners, this article highlights factors and models essential to the creation and management of a robust security culture. For research, we produce an up-to-date characterisation of the field and also define open issues deserving of further attention such as the role of change management processes and national culture in an enterprise's cyber security culture.
This paper outlines the design and development of a survey targeting the cyber-security culture assessment of critical infrastructures during the COVID-19 crisis, when living routine was seriously disturbed and working reality fundamentally affected. Its foundations lie on a security culture framework consisted of 10 different security dimensions analysed into 52 domains examined under two different pillars: organizational and individual. In this paper, a detailed questionnaire building analysis is being presented while revealing the aims, goals and expected outcomes of each question. It concl…
The paper at hand presents the design of a survey aiming at the cyber-security culture assessment of critical infrastructures during the COVID-19 crisis, when living reality was heavily disturbed and working conditions fundamentally affected. The survey is rooted in a security culture framework layered into two levels, organizational and individual, further analyzed into 10 different security dimensions consisted of 52 domains. An in-depth questionnaire building analysis is presented focusing on the aims, goals, and expected results. It concludes with the survey implementation approach while u…
Individual and Contextual Variables of Cyber Security Behaviour -- An empirical analysis of national culture, industry, organisation, and individual variables of (in)secure human behaviour
The number of cyber-attacks are continuing to rise globally. It is therefore vital for organisations to develop the necessary skills to secure their assets and to protect critical national infrastructure. In this short paper, we outline upon human-computer interaction elements which should be considered when developing a cybersecurity training platform, in an effort to maintain levels of user engagement. We provide an overview of existing training platforms before covering specialist cyber ranges. Aspects of human-computer interaction are noted with regards to their relevance in the context of…
Cyber-attacks have become as commonplace as the Internet itself. Each year, industry reports, media outlets and academic articles highlight this increased prevalence, spanning both the amount and variety of attacks and cybercrimes. In this article, we seek to further advance discussions on cyber threats, cognitive vulnerabilities and cyberpsychology through a critical reflection on the social and psychological aspects related to cyber-attacks. In particular, we are interested in understanding how members of the public perceive and engage with risk and how they are impacted during and after a c…
The United Nations conducts peace operations around the world, aiming tomaintain peace and security in conflict torn areas. Whilst early operations werelargely successful, the changing nature of warfare and conflict has often left peaceoperations strugglingto adapt. In this article, we make a contribution towardsefforts to plan for the next evolution in both intra and inter-state conflict: cyberwarfare. It is now widely accepted that cyber warfare will be a component offuture conflicts, and much researchhas been devoted to how governments andmilitaries can prepare for and fight in this new dom…
Purpose: An essential component of an organisation's cybersecurity strategy is building awareness and education of online threats, and how to protect corporate data and services. This research article focuses on this topic and proposes a high-level programme for cybersecurity education and awareness to be used when targeting Small-to-Medium-sized Enterprises/Businesses (SMEs/SMBs) at a city-level. We ground this programme in existing research as well as unique insight into an ongoing city-based project with similar aims. Findings: We find that whilst literature can be informative at guiding ed…
The topic will focus on the U.S. Department of Defense strategy towards improving their network security defenses for the department and the steps they have taken at the agency level where components under DOD such as The Defense Information Systems Agency are working towards adding tools that provides additional capabilities in the cyber space. This approach will be analyzed to determine if DOD goals address any of their vulnerabilities towards protecting their networks. One of the agencies under the DOD umbrella called The Defense Information Systems Agency provides DOD a template on how to …
Cyber security threats to the payment and banking system have become a worldwide menace. The phenomenon has forced financial institutions to take risks as part of their business model. Hence, deliberate investment in sophisticated technologies and security measures has become imperative to safeguard against heavy financial losses and information breaches that may occur due to cyber-attacks. The proliferation of cyber crimes is a huge concern for various stakeholders in the banking sector. Usually, cyber-attacks are carried out via software systems running on a computing system in cyberspace. A…
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory（国防科学技术实验室）；The Alan Turing Institute（艾伦·图灵研究所）
In this paper we explore cyber security defence, through the unification of a novel cyber security simulator with models for (causal) decision-making through optimisation. Particular attention is paid to a recently published approach: dynamic causal Bayesian optimisation (DCBO). We propose that DCBO can act as a blue agent when provided with a view of a simulated network and a causal model of how a red agent spreads within that network. To investigate how DCBO can perform optimal interventions on host nodes, in order to reduce the cost of intrusions caused by the red agent. Through this we dem…
The present paper focuses on Cyber Security Awareness Campaigns, and aims to identify key factors regarding security which may lead them to failing to appropriately change people's behaviour. Past and current efforts to improve information-security practices and promote a sustainable society have not had the desired impact. It is important therefore to critically reflect on the challenges involved in improving information-security behaviours for citizens, consumers and employees. In particular, our work considers these challenges from a Psychology perspective, as we believe that understanding …
A significant limitation of current cyber security research and techniques is its reactive and applied nature. This leads to a continuous 'cyber cycle' of attackers scanning networks, developing exploits and attacking systems, with defenders detecting attacks, analyzing exploits and patching systems. This reactive nature leaves sensitive systems highly vulnerable to attack due to un-patched systems and undetected exploits. Some current research attempts to address this major limitation by introducing systems that implement moving target defense. However, these ideas are typically based on the …
Cyber deception has recently received increasing attentions as a promising mechanism for proactive cyber defense. Cyber deception strategies aim at injecting intentionally falsified information to sabotage the early stage of attack reconnaissance and planning in order to render the final attack action harmless or ineffective. Motivated by recent advances in cyber deception research, we in this paper provide a formal view of cyber deception, and review high-level deception schemes and actions. We also summarize and classify recent research results of cyber defense techniques built upon the conc…
Although Denmark is reportedly one of the most digitised countries in Europe, IT security in Danish companies has not followed along. To shed light into the challenges that companies experience with implementing IT security, we conducted a preliminary study running semi-structured interviews with four employees from four different companies, asking about their IT security and what they need to reduce risks of cyber threats. Our results show that companies are lacking fundamental security protection and are in need of guidance and tools to help them implementing basic security practices, while …
Developing intelligent, interoperable Cyber Threat Information (CTI) sharing technologies can help build strong defences against modern cyber threats. CTIs allow the community to share information about cybercriminals' threats and vulnerabilities and countermeasures to defend themselves or detect malicious activity. A crucial need for success is that the data connected to cyber risks be understandable, organized, and of good quality. The receiving parties may grasp its content and utilize it effectively. This article describes an innovative cyber threat intelligence management platform (CTIMP)…
The Alan Turing Institute（艾伦·图灵研究所）；Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）
Cybercriminals are rapidly developing new malicious tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to enable new classes of adaptive and stealthy attacks. New defensive methods need to be developed to counter these threats. Some cybersecurity professionals are speculating AI will enable corresponding new classes of active cyber defence measures -- is this realistic, or currently mostly hype? The Alan Turing Institute, with expert guidance from the UK National Cyber Security Centre and Defence Science Technology Laboratory, published a research roadmap for AI for ACD last year. This position …
Terms like "Science of Cyber" or "Cyber Science" have been appearing in literature with growing frequency, and influential organizations initiated research initiatives toward developing such a science even though it is not clearly defined. We propose to define the domain of the science of cyber security by noting the most salient artifact within cyber security -- malicious software -- and defining the domain as comprised of phenomena that involve malicious software (as well as legitimate software and protocols used maliciously) used to compel a computing device or a network of computing device…
Research into cybercrime often points to concentrations of abuse at certain hosting providers. The implication is that these providers are worse in terms of security; some are considered `bad' or even `bullet proof'. Remarkably little work exists on systematically comparing the security performance of providers. Existing metrics typically count instances of abuse and sometimes normalize these counts by taking into account the advertised address space of the provider. None of these attempts have worked through the serious methodological challenges that plague metric design. In this paper we pre…
Nowadays, considering the speed of the processes and the amount of data used in cyber defense, it cannot be expected to have an effective defense by using only human power without the help of automation systems. However, for the effective defense against dynamically evolving attacks on networks, it is difficult to develop software with conventional fixed algorithms. This can be achieved by using artificial intelligence methods that provide flexibility and learning capability. The likelihood of developing cyber defense capabilities through increased intelligence of defense systems is quite high…
The salient features of blockchain, such as decentralisation and transparency, have allowed the development of Decentralised Trust and Reputation Management Systems (DTRMS), which mainly aim to quantitatively assess the trustworthiness of the network participants and help to protect the network from adversaries. In the literature, proposals of DTRMS have been applied to various Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) applications, including supply chains, smart cities and distributed energy trading. In this chapter, we outline the building blocks of a generic DTRMS and discuss how it can benefit from blo…
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has caused a powerful transition in the cyber threat landscape. As a result, organisations have had to find new ways to better manage the risks associated with their infrastructure. In response, a significant amount of research has focused on developing efficient Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) sharing platforms. However, most existing solutions are highly centralised and do not provide a way to exchange information in a distributed way. In this chapter, we subsequently seek to evaluate how blockchain technology can be used to address a …
This paper presents a real-time cyber-physical (CPS) testbed for power systems with different real attack scenarios on the synchrophasors-phasor measurement units (PMU). The testbed focuses on real-time cyber-security emulation with components including a digital real-time simulator, virtual machines (VM), a communication network emulator, and a package manipulation tool. The script-based VM deployment and the software-defined network emulation facilitate a highly-scalable cyber-physical testbed, which enables emulations of a real power system under different attack scenarios such as Address R…
Systematic Review of Cybersecurity in Banking: Evolution from Pre-Industry 4.0 to Post-Industry 4.0 in Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Policies and Practice
