A framework to evaluate usable security in online social networking
- Authors: Yeratziotis, Alexandros
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Online social networks -- Security measures , Computer security , Data protection
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:9807 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1012933
- Description: It is commonly held in the literature that users find security and privacy difficult to comprehend. It is also acknowledged that most end-user applications and websites have built-in security and privacy features. Users are expected to interact with these in order to protect their personal information. However, security is generally a secondary goal for users. Considering the complexity associated with security in combination with the notion that it is not users’ primary task, it makes sense that users tend to ignore their security responsibilities. As a result, they make poor security-related decisions and, consequently, their personal information is at risk. Usable Security is the field that investigates these types of issue, focusing on the design of security and privacy features that are usable. In order to understand and appreciate the complexities that exist in the field of Usable Security, the research fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Information Security should be examined. Accordingly, the Information Security field is concerned with all aspects pertaining to the security and privacy of information, while the field of Human-Computer Interaction is concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use. This research delivers a framework to evaluate Usable Security in online social networks. In this study, online social networks that are particular to the health domain were used as a case study and contributed to the development of a framework consisting of three components: a process, a validation tool and a Usable Security heuristic evaluation. There is no existing qualitative process that describes how one would develop and validate a heuristic evaluation. In this regard a heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method that is used to evaluate the design of an interface for any usability violations in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Therefore, firstly, a new process and a validation tool were required to be developed. Once this had been achieved, the process could then be followed to develop a new heuristic evaluation that is specific to Usable Security. In order to assess the validity of a new heuristic evaluation a validation tool is used. The development of tools that can improve the design of security and privacy features on end-user applications and websites in terms of their usability is critical, as this will ensure that the intended users experience them as usable and can utilise them effectively. The framework for evaluating Usable Security contributes to this objective in the context of online social networks.
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- Date Issued: 2011
A model for cultivating resistance to social engineering attacks
- Authors: Jansson, Kenny
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Computer security , Data protection , Human-computer interaction
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MTech
- Identifier: vital:9744 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1588 , Computer security , Data protection , Human-computer interaction
- Description: The human being is commonly considered as being the weakest link in information security. Subsequently, as information is one of the most critical assets in an organization today, it is essential that the human element is considered in deployments of information security countermeasures. However, the human element is often neglected in this regard. Consequently, many criminals are now targeting the user directly to obtain sensitive information instead of spending days or even months trying to hack through systems. Some criminals are targeting users by utilizing various social engineering techniques to deceive the user into disclosing information. For this reason, the users of the Internet and ICT-related technologies are nowadays very vulnerable to various social engineering attacks. As a contribution to increase users’ social engineering awareness, a model – called SERUM – was devised. SERUM aims to cultivate social engineering resistance within a community through exposing the users of the community to ‘fake’ social engineering attacks. The users that react incorrectly to these attacks are instantly notified and requested to participate in an online social engineering awareness program. Thus, users are educated on-demand. The model was implemented as a software system and was utilized to conduct a phishing exercise on all the students of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The aim of the phishing exercise was to determine whether SERUM is effective in cultivating social engineering resistant behaviour within a community. This phishing exercise proved to be successful and positive results emanated. This indicated that a model like SERUM can indeed be used to educate users regarding phishing attacks.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Applying a framework for IT governance in South African higher education institutions
- Authors: Viljoen, Stephen
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Computer security , Universities and colleges -- Computer networks -- Security measures -- South Africa , Data protection
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MTech
- Identifier: vital:9739 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/416 , Computer security , Universities and colleges -- Computer networks -- Security measures -- South Africa , Data protection
- Description: Background: Higher Education (HE), through HE Institutions, plays a very important role in society. There is thus a need for this sector to be well managed, especially with regards to planning, organising, and controlling. Corporate Governance has received a lot of attention in recent times, especially to engender trust on the part of the stakeholders. There are many similarities, but also significant differences in the governance of HE institutions and public companies. Information Technology (IT) plays an extremely important role in the modern organisation, creating huge opportunities, but also increasing the risk to the organisation. Therefore, effective governance of IT in HE Institutions is of great importance.
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- Date Issued: 2005
Implementing the CoSaWoE models in a commercial workflow product
- Authors: Erwee, Carmen
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Computers -- Access control , Workflow , Computer security , Data protection
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MTech
- Identifier: vital:9732 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/169 , Computers -- Access control , Workflow , Computer security , Data protection
- Description: Workflow systems have gained popularity not only as a research topic, but also as a key component of Enterprize Resource Planning packages and e- business. Comprehensive workflow products that automate intra- as well inter-organizational information flow are now available for commercial use. Standardization efforts have centered mostly around the interoperability of these systems, however a standard access control model have yet to be adopted. The research community has developed several models for access control to be included as part of workflow functionality. Commercial systems, however, are still implementing access control functionality in a proprietary manner. This dissertation investigates whether a comprehensive model for gain- ing context-sensitive access control, namely CoSAWoE, can be purposefully implemented in a commercial workflow product. Using methods such as an exploratory prototype, various aspects of the model was implemented to gain an understanding of the di±culties developers face when attempting to map the model to existing proprietary software. Oracle Workflow was chosen as an example of a commercial workflow product. An investigtion of the features of this product, together with the prototype, revealed the ability to affect access control in a similar manner to the model: by specifying access control constraints during administration and design, and then enforcing those constraints dynamically during run-time. However, only certain components within these two aspects of the model directly effected the commercial workflow product. It was argued that the first two requirements of context-sensitive access control, order of events and strict least privilege, addressed by the object design, role engineering and session control components of the model, can be simulated if such capabilities are not pertinently available as part of the product. As such, guidelines were provided for how this can be achieved in Oracle Workflow. However, most of the implementation effort focussed on the last requirement of context-sensitive access control, namely separation of duties. The CoSAWoE model proposes SoD administration steps that includes expressing various business rules through a set of conflicting entities which are maintained outside the scope of the workflow system. This component was implemented easily enough through tables which were created with a relational database. Evaluating these conflicts during run-time to control worklist generation proved more di±cult. First, a thorough understanding of the way in which workflow history is maintained was necessary. A re-usable function was developed to prune user lists according to user involvement in previous tasks in the workflow and the conflicts specified for those users and tasks. However, due to the lack of a central access control service, this re- usable function must be included in the appropriate places in the workflow process model. Furthermore, the dissertation utilized a practical example to develop a prototype. This prototype served a dual purpose: firstly, to aid the author's understanding of the features and principles involved, and secondly, to illustrate and explore the implementation of the model as described in the previous paragraphs. In conclusion the dissertation summarized the CoSAWoE model's compo- nents which were found to be product agnostic, directly or indirectly imple- mentable, or not implemented in the chosen workflow product. The lessons learnt and issues surrounding the implementation effort were also discussed before further research in terms of XML documents as data containers for the workfow process were suggested.
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- Date Issued: 2005
Information security awareness: generic content, tools and techniques
- Authors: Mauwa, Hope
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Computer security , Data protection , Computers -- Safety measures , Information technology -- Security measures
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MTech
- Identifier: vital:9733 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/560 , Computer security , Data protection , Computers -- Safety measures , Information technology -- Security measures
- Description: In today’s computing environment, awareness programmes play a much more important role in organizations’ complete information security programmes. Information security awareness programmes are there to change behaviour or reinforce good security practices, and provide a baseline of security knowledge for all information users. Security awareness is a learning process, which changes individual and organizational attitudes and perceptions so that the importance of security and the adverse consequences of its failure are realized. Therefore, with proper awareness, employees become the most effective layer in an organization’s security defence. With the important role that these awareness programmes play in organizations’ complete information security programmes, it is a must that all organizations that are serious about information security must implement it. But though awareness programmes have become increasing important, the level of awareness in most organizations is still low. It seems that the current approach of developing these programmes does not satisfy the needs of most organizations. Therefore, another approach, which tries to meet the needs of most organizations, is proposed in this project as part of the solution of raising the level of awareness programmes in organizations.
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- Date Issued: 2007
The cost of free instant messaging: an attack modelling perspective
- Authors: Du Preez, Riekert
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Computer security , Instant messaging , Data protection
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MTech
- Identifier: vital:9797 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/499 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1011921 , Computer security , Instant messaging , Data protection
- Description: Instant Messaging (IM) has grown tremendously over the last few years. Even though IM was originally developed as a social chat system, it has found a place in many companies, where it is being used as an essential business tool. However, many businesses rely on free IM and have not implemented a secure corporate IM solution. Most free IM clients were never intended for use in the workplace and, therefore, lack strong security features and administrative control. Consequently, free IM clients can provide attackers with an entry point for malicious code in an organization’s network that can ultimately lead to a company’s information assets being compromised. Therefore, even though free IM allows for better collaboration in the workplace, it comes at a cost, as the title of this dissertation suggests. This dissertation sets out to answer the question of how free IM can facilitate an attack on a company’s information assets. To answer the research question, the dissertation defines an IM attack model that models the ways in which an information system can be attacked when free IM is used within an organization. The IM attack model was created by categorising IM threats using the STRIDE threat classification scheme. The attacks that realize the categorised threats were then modelled using attack trees as the chosen attack modelling tool. Attack trees were chosen because of their ability to model the sequence of attacker actions during an attack. The author defined an enhanced graphical notation that was adopted for the attack trees used to create the IM attack model. The enhanced attack tree notation extends traditional attack trees to allow nodes in the trees to be of different classes and, therefore, allows attack trees to convey more information. During the process of defining the IM attack model, a number of experiments were conducted where IM vulnerabilities were exploited. Thereafter, a case study was constructed to document a simulated attack on an information system that involves the exploitation of IM vulnerabilities. The case study demonstrates how an attacker’s attack path relates to the IM attack model in a practical scenario. The IM attack model provides insight into how IM can facilitate an attack on a company’s information assets. The creation of the attack model for free IM lead to several realizations. The IM attack model revealed that even though the use of free IM clients may seem harmless, such IM clients can facilitate an attack on a company’s information assets. Furthermore, certain IM vulnerabilities may not pose a great risk by themselves, but when combined with the exploitation of other vulnerabilities, a much greater threat can be realized. These realizations hold true to what French playwright Jean Anouilh once said: “What you get free costs too much”.
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- Date Issued: 2006