Detecting Insider Threats: Solutions and Trends

ABSTRACT

Insider threats pose significant challenges to any organization. Many solutions have been proposed in the past to detect insider threats. Unfortunately, given the complexity of the problem and the human factors involved, many solutions which have been proposed face strict constraints and limitations when it comes to the working environment. As a result, many past insider threat solutions have in practice failed in their implementations. In this work, we review some of the recent insider threat detection solutions and explore their benefits and limitations. We also discuss insider threat issues for emerging areas such as cloud computing, virtualization, and social networking.     

内蒙古电力信息系统风险评估的探索与启示

本文探讨了电力信息系统风险评估的相关内容,并根据信息系统风险评估的基本方法,介绍了内蒙古电力公司电力信息系统在风险评估方面做出的探索和给我们的启示,为电力信息系统风险评估工作做出了有益的探索。     

Law Enforcement's Ability to Deal with Digital Crime and the Implications for Business

Much has been made of the capabilities to commit a crime that has a digital component, whether it is hacking, fraud, embezzlement, identity theft, organized crime, child pornography, or other criminal act. While the capabilities of the perpetrators and IT professionals' response are often discussed, what is often overlooked is the ability of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute digital crime. An information security plan that is not developed with prosecution as a possible outcome is short sighted. This article is a research report on Michigan's law enforcement capabilities, including training, staffing levels, and trends, and it provides information that will help IT professionals understand the challenges they may encounter when soliciting help from law enforcement agencies.     

A Philosophy of Information Technology and Systems (IT & S) as Tools: Tool Development Context, Associated Skills and the Global Technology Transfer (GTT) Process

It is the intent of this paper to discuss a philosophy of Information Technology and Systems (IT & S) as tools and the impact of this philosophy on the Global Technical Transfer (GTT) process of IT & S.It is argued that IT & S by definition, are artefacts, tools that have been made, used, inherited and studied within a cultural context which encompasses economic, historical, technical and social values and assumptions which are focussed in particular skill sets. It is assumed that these skill sets are mostly in evidence in any culture that receives the IT & S tool for use in a technical transfer process. It is argued, therefore, if we understand the cultural context in which a tool is made then we will understand the skills to transfer and use such tools in an effective manner. The issue we must face as makers, users, inheritors and scholars of IT & S tools, however, is that the tool context and inherent in-built values and skill sets, may not be in evidence across all cultures. This would make the effective use of IT & S, in a global sense, a difficult and complex (if not impossible) undertaking.From this position it is argued that IT & S tools reflect the IT & S discipline, as it is these tools which embody the assumptions of the discipline and hence, its paradigm. The Bunker and Dean (Bunker DJ, Dean RG. Philosophical Traditions in Information Systems: Challenger of an Interdisciplinary View, Faculty of Commerce Workshop, University of Wollongong, July 10--11, 1997) disciplinary model is highlighted as a means of understanding how tools are made within a cultural context and how they reflect the discipline in which they are created. This paper then goes on to explain the ramifications of IT & S as a discipline on the GTT process and proposes a skill-focussed approach, within a culture, to determining what IT & S may be appropriate for that particular cultural context.     

Mayday,Mayday, Mayday: Using salivary cortisol to detect distress (and eustress!) in critical incident training

The understanding of stress and its impact on human performance is crucial to mitigate human error in the face of a threat. This is especially the case for critical incidents on a ship bridge, where human error can easily lead to severe danger for crew, cargo, and other vessels. To overcome the current limitations of robust objective stress measures that reliably detect (di-)stress under highly noisy conditions, we set out to explore whether salivary cortisol – the stress biomarker in medicine and psychology – is a valuable complementary assessment tool in a high-stress/emergency context. In a controlled within-subjects experiment (N = 12) using a ship bridge simulator, we measured stress levels under three conditions (80 min each): baseline, low stress (open water navigation task in autopilot), and high stress (open water emergency scenario). We sampled salivary cortisol at 10 min intervals in conjunction with heart rate (variability) monitoring, and subjective stress assessments from both participants and expert evaluators. Results validate salivary cortisol as a successful tool for detecting distress. Unlike the other stress measures, salivary cortisol strongly correlated with expert stress assessments (r = 0.856) and overt stress behavior like instances of freezing and missing response cues. Surprisingly, data further revealed decreased salivary cortisol across periods of self-assessed improved performance (i.e., eustress). In fact, data suggests an inverted u-relationship between performance and salivary cortisol. The findings have direct implications for the vast field of emergency training, and serve as a first important validation and benchmark to proceed with real life applications.     

Proposing the Affect-Trust Infusion Model (ATIM) to explain and predict the influence of high and low affect infusion on Web vendor trust

We adapt the Affect Infusion Model and propose the Affect-Trust Infusion Model (ATIM), which explains and predicts how and when cognition, through perceived Web site performance (PWP), and positive emotion (PE) each influence Web vendor trust. The ATIM explains the underlying causal mechanisms that determine the degree of affect infusion and the subsequent processing strategy that a user adopts when interacting with a new Web site. Under high affect infusion, PE acts as a mediator between PWP and vendor trust; under low affect infusion, PWP primarily affects trust, and PE is disintermediated. We review two distinct, rigorously validated experiments that empirically support the ATIM. To conclude, we detail several promising research opportunities that can leverage the ATIM and show how the ATIM can help to guide user-centered design (UCD) as an example practical application.     

Harnessing information and communication technologies (ICTs) to address urban poverty: Emerging open policy lessons for the open knowledge economy

Urban poverty is a complex socio-economic problem. The expected doubling of the urban population relative to rural areas by 2050 without a corresponding economic and infrastructure growth will worsen the problem, especially in emerging economies. Poor urban residents face rising unemployment and underemployment, constrained access to financial services, market exploitation, poor housing, crime, unsatisfactory health services and scant education opportunities. Several players have attempted to address these problems through information and communication technologies. This paper isolated a few of these to determine critical success factors on the economic empowerment front.