Cybersecurity Practices Research Articles

Cybersecurity Assessments

The purpose of this study is to review the existing cybersecurity assessments and practices used by technology companies to protect their assets from potential harm and damage. Today, the software systems have thousands of vulnerabilities and, when breached, can cost the companies millions of dollars. A clear path for identifying risks, detecting threats, and responding to them is imperative. However, it is not easy to quantify cybersecurity risks as the networks and networks of networks are becoming complicated and, so most risk assessments use relevant parameters to calculate a risk score. If this score is high, it has a high impact on the critical systems. This knowledge helps hi-tech companies such as finance, banking, healthcare, defense, and supply-chain sectors to prioritize their actions and investments effectively. This study examines the risk assessment strategies and steps that companies adopt across the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to stay ahead of cybersecurity risks.

Municipal Cybersecurity: More Work Needs to be Done

As governments have digitized their operations, they have opened themselves to cyberattacks, resulting in harmful disruptions to government services. The scholarly world has been slow to pick up on this growing risk. Professional associations have conducted studies of their own, and produced recommendations, but few scholars have looked closely at cybersecurity practices at the municipal level. The interconnectedness of local infrastructure—across and among agencies and levels of government—makes it hard to figure out what is happening. In this paper, we urge scholars from multiple disciplines to examine the dangers created by the cross-linkages that characterize local cybersecurity. We examine the existing academic research, and demonstrate the significant growth in cybersecurity practice that has cropped up in spite of the relative sparsity of academic work. Theory and practice need to catch up with each other.

Cyber-Situational Crime Prevention and the Breadth of Cybercrimes among Higher Education Institutions

Academic institutions house enormous amounts of critical information from social security numbers of students to proprietary research data. Thus, maintaining up to date cybersecurity practices to protect academic institutions’ information and facilities against cyber-perpetrators has become a top priority. The purpose of this study is to assess common cybersecurity measures through a situational crime prevention (SCP) theoretical framework. Using a national data set of academic institutions in the United States, this study investigates the link between common cybersecurity measures, crime prevention activities, and cybercrimes. By focusing on the conceptualization of cybersecurity measures as SCP techniques, this study also offers the SCP approach as a framework by which universities can seek to reduce incidents of cybercrime through the design, maintenance, and use of the built environment in the digital realm. Implications for theory, research and practice are discussed.

Cyber-Situational Crime Prevention and the Breadth of Cybercrimes among Higher Education Institutions

Academic institutions house enormous amounts of critical information from social security numbers of students to proprietary research data. Thus, maintaining up to date cybersecurity practices to protect academic institutions’ information and facilities against cyber-perpetrators has become a top priority. The purpose of this study is to assess common cybersecurity measures through a situational crime prevention (SCP) theoretical framework. Using a national data set of academic institutions in the United States, this study investigates the link between common cybersecurity measures, crime prevention activities, and cybercrimes. By focusing on the conceptualization of cybersecurity measures as SCP techniques, this study also offers the SCP approach as a framework by which universities can seek to reduce incidents of cybercrime through the design, maintenance, and use of the built environment in the digital realm. Implications for theory, research and practice are discussed.

Методика кількісної оцінки ризиків із застосуванням онтології факторного аналізу інформаційних ризиків

Unlike the already familiar scheme of threat development (for example, in the military sphere), the development of cyber threats follows a different logic. At the moment of detecting the influence of a threat, it can already entail significant negative consequences. At the same time, the efficiency of the cyber security system, as a rule, lags significantly behind the growth rates of material and non-material losses from the implementation of the threat.To neutralize cyber threats in the world practice, the theory of risk management, or risk management, is successfully used, which, unfortunately, is still rarely used in Ukrainian realities. According to current best cyber security practices, optimal security is achieved through an ongoing process of identification, risk assessment, and ongoing maintenance of security processes, combined with vulnerability remediation.The article is devoted to improving the methodology for quantitative risk assessment, which uses the methods of factor analysis of information risks (FAIR) by decomposition, the mathematical apparatus of simulation, and allows you to make more balanced and well-grounded decisions to prevent the onset of negative consequences in the event of the implementation of certain cybernetic threats. The given calculation algorithm, if implemented as a computer program, will help in the implementation of a proactive response to threats in the cyber security system in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.In the future, it is advisable to analyze the sources of obtaining the most relevant primary data necessary for the functioning of the simulation model and, on the basis of the experiments carried out, to find out the most optimal ways to increase the efficiency of the functioning of the cyber security system in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and to develop an appropriate software package for calculating the risk values according to the formulas given.

Internet banking in Nigeria: Cyber security breaches, practices and capability

This paper reports the findings from a research project on cyber security in the Nigerian Internet banking industry, by presenting the main cyber security breaches it has experienced, along with its cyber security capability and practices. An online survey was conducted with 100 experienced professional working in both the Nigerian banking and banking security service sectors. Our findings reveal a transformation of the Nigerian cybercrime industry from low-tech cyber-enabled crimes to high-tech sophisticated breaches, with viruses, worms or Trojan infections; electronic spam mails; and hacking being the top three most experienced breaches. In term of cyber security practices, banking professionals have received adequate management in both support and training. The lack of advanced technologies to prevent and address cyber security breaches and the unsatisfactory level of legislative compliance, together, appear to be the primary factors that have reduced cyber security capability in our sample of banks.

The Reality of Technologies for Cyber Security Challenges

In the field of informational technology, cyber security plays an important role in ensuring that information has become one of today's major challenges. The first thing that comes to our mind when we ever talk about cyber security is ' cyber crimes, ' which are rising exponentially every day. Different governments and companies take numerous measures to prevent such cyber crimes. In addition to various cyber security measures, many still have a major concern. It also reports on the innovations in cyber security strategies, practices and developments that change the face of online health. This paper focuses mainly on cyber security challenges facing the latest technologies.

Validation of a socio-technical management process for optimising cybersecurity practices

This study developed a socio-technical management process to optimise both technical and non-technical security measures to provide optimal, rather than adequate, enterprise security safeguards. The rationale was that over the last decade, studies have consistently shown that the human being remains the weakest link in the entire enterprise security chain. As a result, the majority of cyberattacks have resulted from human behaviour or error. Despite this, evidence suggests that many enterprises are still taking overly technocentric approaches to cybersecurity risk and this has increased the chances of missing the bigger picture. Thus, a mechanism to optimise both technical and non-technical security measures by identifying and closing socio-technical security gaps in existing enterprise security frameworks was required. The mechanism was derived from the literature and validated by industry practitioners where it was found that practitioners could categorise security controls into social (human included), technical and environmental dimensions. Through this, it was found that there were mainly non-technical (social and environmental dimensions) security gaps at practitioners’ organisations. To further demonstrate how this security challenge can be identified and addressed, a desktop application of the management process was carried out on the COBIT 5 for Information Security framework. The results reveal the non-technical security gaps on COBIT 5 and the management process demonstrates how these could be closed and optimised. The importance of this study is to highlight that taking overly technocentric approaches to enterprise security risk does not yield significantly positive results in protecting assets. A new approach is required and the socio-technical management process is this paper's contribution to address that security challenge.

The cybersecurity of municipalities in the United States: an exploratory survey of policies and practices

ABSTRACT Few empirical studies have examined the cybersecurity policies of cities in the United States. Issues that have yet to be addressed in the literature include whether cities (of various sizes) maintain cybersecurity plans and policies that are sufficient to protect their citizens’ data, a general lack of knowledge regarding cybersecurity policies, and practices on the part of cities that place at risk the security of public services and citizens’ privacy. Our research explored these issues by administering a survey to public officials working in U.S. cities. The survey instrument included questions pertaining to (1) the existence of a formal cybersecurity strategic plan and the utilisation of internet-based technologies in cities, (2) the support received by cities for their cybersecurity planning, (3) the types of cybersecurity policies being implemented in cities, and (4) the resources needed to conduct cybersecurity planning. We collected surveys from 168 officials employed in cities across the U.S. Our analysis of the results indicates that municipalities have formal cybersecurity policies but that they need to increase the integration of cybersecurity practices into their daily management processes by tracking their data, consulting outside security auditors, and increasing management training related to data security.

Multiple social platforms reveal actionable signals for software vulnerability awareness: A study of GitHub, Twitter and Reddit.

The awareness about software vulnerabilities is crucial to ensure effective cybersecurity practices, the development of high-quality software, and, ultimately, national security. This awareness can be better understood by studying the spread, structure and evolution of software vulnerability discussions across online communities. This work is the first to evaluate and contrast how discussions about software vulnerabilities spread on three social platforms—Twitter, GitHub, and Reddit. Moreover, we measure how user-level e.g., bot or not, and content-level characteristics e.g., vulnerability severity, post subjectivity, targeted operating systems as well as social network topology influence the rate of vulnerability discussion spread. To lay the groundwork, we present a novel fundamental framework for measuring information spread in multiple social platforms that identifies spread mechanisms and observables, units of information, and groups of measurements. We then contrast topologies for three social networks and analyze the effect of the network structure on the way discussions about vulnerabilities spread. We measure the scale and speed of the discussion spread to understand how far and how wide they go, how many users participate, and the duration of their spread. To demonstrate the awareness of more impactful vulnerabilities, a subset of our analysis focuses on vulnerabilities targeted during recent major cyber-attacks and those exploited by advanced persistent threat groups. One of our major findings is that most discussions start on GitHub not only before Twitter and Reddit, but even before a vulnerability is officially published. The severity of a vulnerability contributes to how much it spreads, especially on Twitter. Highly severe vulnerabilities have significantly deeper, broader and more viral discussion threads. When analyzing vulnerabilities in software products we found that different flavors of Linux received the highest discussion volume. We also observe that Twitter discussions started by humans have larger size, breadth, depth, adoption rate, lifetime, and structural virality compared to those started by bots. On Reddit, discussion threads of positive posts are larger, wider, and deeper than negative or neutral posts. We also found that all three networks have high modularity that encourages spread. However, the spread on GitHub is different from other networks, because GitHub is more dense, has stronger community structure and assortativity that enhances information diffusion. We anticipate the results of our analysis to not only increase the understanding of software vulnerability awareness but also inform the existing and new analytical frameworks for simulating information spread e.g., disinformation across multiple social environments online.

Towards a maturity model for health-care cloud security (M2HCS)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a novel maturity model for health-care cloud security (M2HCS), which focuses on assessing cyber security in cloud-based health-care environments by incorporating the sub-domains of health-care cyber security practices and introducing health-care-specific cyber security metrics. This study aims to expand the domain of health-care cyber security maturity model by including cloud-specific aspects than is usually seen in the literature.Design/methodology/approachThe intended use of the proposed model was demonstrated using the evaluation method – “construct validity test” as the paper’s aim was to assess the final model and the output of the valuation. The study involved a literature-based case study of a national health-care foundation trust with an overall view because the model is assessed for the entire organisation. The data were complemented by examination of hospitals’ cyber security internal processes through web-accessible documents, and identified relevant literature.FindingsThe paper provides awareness about how organisational-related challenges have been identified as a main inhibiting factor for the adoption of cloud computing in health care. Regardless of the remunerations of cloud computing, its security maturity and levels of adoption varies, especially in health care. Maturity models provide a structure towards improving an organisation’s capabilities. It suggests that although several cyber security maturity models and standards resolving specific threats exist, there is a lack of maturity models for cloud-based health-care security.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the selected research method, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, future research studies can investigate the propositions further. Another is that the current thresholds were determined empirically, although it worked for the case study assessment. However, to establish more realistic threshold levels, there is a need for more validation of the model using more case studies.Practical implicationsThe paper includes maturity model for the assessment management and improvement of the security posture of a health-care organisation actively using cloud. For executives, it provides a detailed security assessment of the eHealth cloud to aid in decision making. For security experts, its quantitative metrics support proactive and reactive processes.Originality/valueThe paper fulfils a recognised requirement for security maturity model focussed on health-care cloud. It could be extended to resolve evolving cyber settings.

Manar: An Arabic Game-based Application Aimed for Teaching Cybersecurity using Image Processing

People use the Internet for various activities, including exchanging money, playing games, and shopping. However, this powerful network came at a cost: the features that provide the Internet with these capabilities are also what make it vulnerable. The need for cybersecurity tools and practices was recognized, especially for children, since they tend to be naive and can be easily tricked. Aimed at children from 6 to 12 years old, Manar is an Arabic smartphone game that seeks to build a generation who are well-informed about cybersecurity issues. It teaches them about notable cybersecurity topics such as social engineering and cryptography, it also has a very appealing theme to attract children to play the game. The theme being “pirates and islands”, each level will be represented as an island and a moving pirate ship will navigate between the levels. The application introduces the technology of image processing in a unique way, allowing children to move around and look for objects, which makes the game as interactive as possible to attract children’s attention.

Cyber Security Defence Policies: A Proposed Guidelines for Organisations Cyber Security Practices

Many organisations have been struggling to defend their cyberspace without a specific direction or guidelines to follow and they have described and identified cyber attack as a devastating potential on business operation in a broader perspective. Since then, researchers in cyber security have come out with numerous reports on threats and attack on organisations. This study is conducted to develop and propose a Cyber Security Defence Policies (CSDP) by harmonising and synthesizing the existing practices identified from the literature review. Observation and questionnaire were adopted to evaluate, review and collect data under ethical agreement from 10 organisations. The validation is based on the principal components for the proposed CSDP and the proposed CSDP, using SPSS as the statistical tool. The result shows that, the validation of the proposed CSDP by 20 experts reveals a standard deviation of 0.607, 0.759, 0.801, 0.754, 0.513, 0.587 and 0.510 on each of the principal components without a missing value respectively. While the correlation matrix and the reproduced correlation matrix for the proposed CSDP indicated 61% and the percentage of acceptance on the principal components for the proposed CSDP are higher than 50%. Therefore, from the outcome, it has shown that the acceptance responds towards the proposed CSDP and the result from the principal components analysis (eigenvalue analysis) are significant enough for implementation and can be adopted by organisations as a guidelines for organisation cyber security practices.

Cybersecurity in Healthcare: Comparing Cybersecurity Maturity and Experiences Across Global Healthcare Organizations

Health systems around the world are increasingly reliant on digital technology. Such reliance requires that healthcare organizations consider effective cybersecurity and digital resilience as a fundamental component of patient safety, with recent cyberattacks highlighting the risks to patients and targeted organizations. To better understand how well-prepared organizations are to meet this challenge we developed and administered a survey to examine the current cybersecurity landscape and preparedness level across global healthcare organizations. Cyber threats were a common concern for the 17 healthcare organizations who participated. The principal concerns highlighted were data security, including the manipulation or loss of electronic health records; loss of trust in the organization; and risks of service disruption. Cybersecurity maturity scoring showed that despite the majority of organizations having established cybersecurity practices, levels of awareness and education were universally poor. Policymakers should consider raising awareness and improving education/training on cybersecurity as a fundamental tenet of patient safety.Funding Statement: This work was supported by the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Qatar Foundation. Infrastructure support for this research was provided by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC).Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest associated with this research.Ethics Approval Statement: The research protocol was reviewed and institutional; ethical approval was granted by the Imperial College London Joint Research Compliance Office (JRCO).

Cybersecurity Readiness: An Empirical Study of Effective Cybersecurity Practices for Industrial Control Systems

Cybersecurity Readiness: An Empirical Study of Effective Cybersecurity Practices for Industrial Control Systems

Trusting artificial intelligence in cybersecurity is a double-edged sword

Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity tasks are attracting greater attention from the private and the public sectors. Estimates indicate that the market for AI in cybersecurity will grow from US$1 billion in 2016 to a US$34.8 billion net worth by 2025. The latest national cybersecurity and defence strategies of several governments explicitly mention AI capabilities. At the same time, initiatives to define new standards and certification procedures to elicit users’ trust in AI are emerging on a global scale. However, trust in AI (both machine learning and neural networks) to deliver cybersecurity tasks is a double-edged sword: it can improve substantially cybersecurity practices, but can also facilitate new forms of attacks to the AI applications themselves, which may pose severe security threats. We argue that trust in AI for cybersecurity is unwarranted and that, to reduce security risks, some form of control to ensure the deployment of ‘reliable AI’ for cybersecurity is necessary. To this end, we offer three recommendations focusing on the design, development and deployment of AI for cybersecurity. Current national cybersecurity and defence strategies of several governments mention explicitly the use of AI. However, it will be important to develop standards and certification procedures, which involves continuous monitoring and assessment of threats. The focus should be on the reliability of AI-based systems, rather than on eliciting users’ trust in AI.

UAE’s Strategy Towards Most Cyber Resilient Nation

With the fast-paced industrial and Techni revolution, smart nations are emerging with the idea of integrating the developing technologies, like IoT and CPS, to make communications and networks easier and closely interconnected. With increasing technology usage globally, the UAE envisions transitioning into a global smart nation by innovating and deploying world class disruptive technologies for the better connectivity digitally. However, the frequency of cyber threats has also increased drastically with this ever-evolving technology. For a nation like UAE that is transforming into a digital nation at a rapid speed, while still having stakeholders with poor cybersecurity practices, UAE stands as a strong target for attacks by malicious hackers. With cyber-attacks becoming the top most concern globally, especially in the Middle East, UAE has built certain strategies to combat the evolving issue of cybersecurity. In this paper, the authors suggest that just as the collaboration of the key stakeholders – government, academics, industry and society – depicted under the Quadruple Model is needed to develop an innovative and creative nation, so is their coordination required to protect that nation from the potential cyber threats. In light of this theory, the four key stakeholders of the UAE are analyzed for their cybersecurity practices, initiatives and coordination to prove UAE’s commitment towards becoming the most cyber resilient nation in the world.

What the hack: Systematic risk contagion from cyber events

This paper examines the impact of cybercrime and hacking events on equity market volatility across publicly traded corporations. The volatility influence of these cybercrime events is shown to be dependent on the number of clients exposed across all sectors and the type of the cyber security breach event, with significantly large volatility effects presented for companies who find themselves exposed to cybercrime in the form of hacking. Evidence is presented to suggest that corporations with large data breaches are punished substantially in the form of stock market volatility and significantly reduced abnormal stock returns. Companies with lower levels of market capitalisation are found to be most susceptible. In an environment where corporate data protection should be paramount, minor breaches appear to be relatively unpunished by the stock market. We also show that there is a growing importance in the contagion channel from cybersecurity breaches to markets volatility. Systematic weakness in the existent mechanisms for cybersecurity oversight and enforcement could be improved through the ring-fenced incentivisation of both current and ex-hackers. Their expertise is central to the identification of weak corporate cybersecurity practices.

Systems theoretic process analysis of information security: the case of aadhaar

ABSTRACTA new way of thinking about cybersecurity is much needed to deal with the complex and dynamic cyber-ecosystem. In this paper, we introduce a systems thinking based approach for solving problems related to cybersecurity. We adapt the powerful safety-hazard analysis method, Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) based on systems theory to analyze the cybersecurity related features of India’s massive digital identity program, Aadhaar. Our findings produce important insights. On one hand, it helps identify the security gaps of the Aadhaar system, and on the other hand, it provides controls using systems thinking to overcome these gaps. We contribute to understanding the world of cybersecurity practices and develop risk mitigation strategies that can benefit the Aadhaar.

High-profile data breaches: Designing the right data protection architecture based on the law, ethics and trust

Although cyber attacks have tremendous financial and reputational ramifications for organisations, the number of high-profile data breaches continues to grow. Oftentimes, these data losses can be attributed to companies leaving themselves vulnerable through poor cyber security practices. This paper argues that companies must protect their businesses and customers from data breaches by implementing companywide changes and improving their overall security behaviour. The high-profile data breach experienced by Equifax, which affected millions of Equifax clients around the world, is used to illustrate the logic for enhancing organisational-level privacy programmes based on ethical reasoning. As new cyber security risks emerge, this case demonstrates that to protect critical data companies must be proactive in their technology security efforts.