Measuring the human factor of cyber security

Abstract

This paper investigates new methods to measure, quantify and evaluate the security posture of human organizations especially within large corporations and government agencies. Computer security is not just about technology and systems. It is also about the people that use those systems and how their vulnerable behaviors can lead to exploitation. We focus on measuring enterprise-level susceptibility to phishing attacks. Results of experiments conducted at Columbia University and the system used to conduct the experiments are presented that show how the system can also be effective for training users. We include a description of follow-on work that has been proposed to DHS that aims to measure and improve the security posture of government departments and agencies, as well as for comparing security postures of individual agencies against one another.