On this #WorldBookDay my publisher named me Author of the Month and is kindly offering a 15% discount on The Psychology of Information Security with the code Leron15.
They also wrote a nice blog about it.
Book of the month
Tag Archives: Security Culture
How to develop a culture of security
Managing change and improving security culture should start with understanding the organisation, the people in it and what drives them.
In the case of cyber security, this begins with understanding why current security practices might not be effective and why people often find workarounds rather than follow security processes.
Book signing
I’ve been asked to sign a large order of my book The Psychology of Information Security and hope that people who receive a copy will appreciate the personal touch!
I wrote this book to help security professionals and people who are interested in a career in cyber security to do their job better. Not only do we need to help manage cyber security risks, but also communicate effectively in order to be successful. To achieve this, I suggest starting by understanding the wider organisational context of what we are protecting and why.
Communicating often and across functions is essential when developing and implementing a security programme to mitigate identified risks. In the book, I discuss how to engage with colleagues to factor in their experiences and insights to shape security mechanisms around their daily roles and responsibilities. I also recommend orienting security education activities towards the goals and values of individual team members, as well as the values of the organisation.
I also warn against imposing too much security on the business. At the end of the day, the company needs to achieve its business objectives and innovate, albeit securely. The aim should be to educate people about security risks and help colleagues make the right decisions, showing that security is not only important to keep the company afloat or meet a compliance requirement but that it can also be a business enabler. This helps demonstrate to the Board that security contributes to the overall success of the organisation by elevating trust and amplifying the brand message, which in turn leads to happier customers.
Free security awareness training for your staff
Who needs to buy e-learning modules for employee security awareness programmes when NCSC kindly made available their training for free?
NCSC’s Top Tips For Staff includes online videos (that can be also included in your own learning management system), knowledge check and an infographic.
It’s a quick and easy way to get you started on the journey of building security culture in your company and meet some of the compliance requirements. This can be especially helpful for startups and non-profits with limited budgets.
Can AI help improve security culture?
I’ve been exploring the current application of machine learning techniques to cybersecurity. Although, there are some strong use cases in the areas of log analysis and malware detection, I couldn’t find the same quantity of research on applying AI to the human side of cybersecurity.
Can AI be used to support the decision-making process when developing cyber threat prevention mechanisms in organisations and influence user behaviour towards safer choices? Can modelling adversarial scenarios help us better understand and protect against social engineering attacks?
To answer these questions, a multidisciplinary perspective should be adopted with technologists and psychologists working together with industry and government partners.
While designing such mechanisms, consideration should be given to the fact that many interventions can be perceived by users as negatively impacting their productivity, as they demand additional effort to be spent on security and privacy activities not necessarily related to their primary activities [1, 2].
A number of researchers use the principles from behavioural economics to identify cyber security “nudges” (e.g. [3], [4]) or visualisations [5,6]. This approach helps them make better decisions and minimises perceived effort by moving them away from their default position. This method is being applied in the privacy area, for example for reduced Facebook sharing [7] and improved smartphone privacy settings [8]. Additionally there is greater use of these as interventions, particularly with installation of mobile applications [9].
The proposed socio-technical approach to the reduction of cyber threats aims to account for the development of responsible and trustworthy people-centred AI solutions that can use data whilst maintaining personal privacy.
A combination of supervised and unsupervised learning techniques is already being employed to predict new threats and malware based on existing patterns. Machine learning techniques can be used to monitor system and human activity to detect potential malicious deviations.
Building adversarial models, designing empirical studies and running experiments (e.g. using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk) can help better measure the effectiveness of attackers’ techniques and develop better defence mechanisms. I believe there is a need to explore opportunities to utilise machine learning to aid the human decision-making process whereby people are supported by, and work together with, AI to better defend against cyber attacks.
We should draw upon participatory co-design and follow a people-centred approach so that relevant stakeholders are engaged in the process. This can help develop personalised and contextualised solutions, crucial to addressing ethical, legal and social challenges that cannot be solved with AI automation alone.
How to be a trusted advisor
Being a security leader is first and foremost acting as a trusted advisor to the business. This includes understanding its objectives and aligning your efforts to support and enable delivery on the wider strategy.
It is also about articulating cyber risks and opportunities and working with the executive team on managing them. This doesn’t mean, however, that your role is to highlight security weaknesses and leave it to the board to figure it all out. Instead, being someone they can turn to for advice is the best way to influence the direction and make the organisation more resilient in combating cyber threats.
For your advice to be effective, you first need to earn the right to offer it. One of the best books I’ve read on the subject is The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister. It’s not a new book and it’s written from the perspective of a professional services firm but that doesn’t mean the lessons from it can’t be applied in the security context. It covers the mindset, attributes and principles of a trusted advisor.
Unsurprisingly, the major focus of this work is on developing trust. The author summarises his views on this subject in the trust equation:
Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
It’s a simple yet powerful representation of what contributes to and hinders the trust building process.
It’s hard to trust someone’s recommendations when they don’t put our interests first and instead are preoccupied with being right or jump to solutions without fully understanding the problem.
Equally, as important credibility is, the long list of your professional qualifications and previous experience on its own is not sufficient to be trustworthy. Having courage and integrity, following through on your promises and active listening, among other things are key. In the words of Maister, “it is not enough to be right, you must also be helpful”.
How to apply FBI’s behavioural change stairway to security
Unlike the FBI’s Hostage Negotiation Team, cyber security professionals are rarely involved in high-stakes negotiations involving human life. But that doesn’t mean they can’t use some of the techniques developed by them to apply it to improve security culture, overcome resistance and guide organisational change.
Behind the apparent simplicity, this model is a tried and tested way to influence human behaviour over time. The crux of it is that you can’t skip any steps as consecutive efforts build on the previous ones. The common mistake many cyber security professionals make is they jump straight to Influence or Behavioral change with phishing simulations or security awareness campaigns but this can be counterproductive.
As explained in the original paper, it is recommended to invest time in active listening, empathy and establishing rapport first. In the security context, this might mean working with the business stakeholders to understand their objectives and concerns, rather than sowing fear of security breaches and regulatory fines.
All of this doesn’t mean you have to treat every interaction like a hostile negotiation or treat your business executives as violent felons. The aim is to build trust to be able to best support the business not manipulate your way into getting your increased budget signed off.I cover some techniques in The Psychology of Information Security – feel free to check it out if you would like to learn more.
CSO30 Conference – behavioural science in cyber security
I’ve been invited to speak at the CSO30 Conference today on applying behavioural science to cyber security.
I talked about the role behavioural science plays in improving cybersecurity in organisations, the challenges of applying academic theory in practice and how to overcome them.
I shared some tips on how to build the culture of security and measure the success of your security programme.
We also spoke about the differences in approaches and scalability of your security programme depending on the size and context you organisation, including staffing and resourcing constraints.
Overall, I think we covered a lot of ground in just 30 minutes and registration is still open if you’d like to watch a recording.
Royal Holloway University of London adopts my book for their MSc Information Security programme
One of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities has selected The Psychology of Information Security to be included in their flagship Information Security programme as part of their ongoing collaboration with industry professionals.
Royal Holloway University of London’s MSc in Information Security was the first of its kind in the world. It is certified by GCHQ, the UK Government Communications Headquarters, and taught by academics and industrial partners in one of the largest and most established Information Security Groups in the world. It is a UK Academic Centre of Excellence for cyber security research, and an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Doctoral Training in cyber security.
Researching and teaching behaviours, risk perception and decision-making in security is one of the key components of the programme and my book is one of the resources made available to students.
“We adopted The Psychology of Information Security book for our MSc in Information Security and have been using it for two years now. Our students appreciate the insights from the book and it is on the recommended reading list for the Human Aspects of Security and Privacy module. The feedback from students has been very positive as it brings the world of academia and industry closer together.”
Dr Konstantinos Mersinas,
Director of Distance Learning Programme and MSc Information Security Lecturer.
One year in: a look back
In the past year I had the opportunity to help a tech startup shape its culture and make security a brand differentiator. As the Head of Information Security, I was responsible for driving the resilience, governance and compliance agenda, adjusting to the needs of a dynamic and growing business.
