Human factors in security

Lately some discussions arose on the Internet about the human factors in the security Common Body of Knowledgs (CBK) of the (ISC)².

Some of the arguments can be found here, here and here. The point is that learning the CBK (see here for a link to the CBK book ) students who want to certify for CISSP are not trained in the human factors of security.

Some say that apart from the 10 main topics in the CBK an extra topic on human factros should be added. Others state that human factors are part of almost all of the CBK topics. My opinion is that human factors are not very well addressed in the CBK. Instead of adding a extra topic to the CBK I would suggest to include human factors more explicitly in the BCK topics already available. Not only should human factors be included, but also some generic patterns should be addresses that can be used to handle the human shortcomings regarding security.

Some of these are:

  • Humans tend to be sloppy. They write passwords down or they lose USB sticks
  • Humans tend to take shortcuts to do their work more efficiently, sometimes circumvencing security policies
  • Humans are usually willing to help others, opening up to social engineering attacks

I think CISSP students can use a little help on addressing these kind of issues. Maybe an elaboration on these topics in a new version of the CBK would help.


This entry was posted on Thursday 24 September 2009

Earlier articles

Quantum computing

Security at cloud providers not getting better because of government regulation

The cloud is as insecure as its configuration

Infrastructure as code

DevOps for infrastructure

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

(Hyper) Converged Infrastructure

Object storage

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

What's the point of using Docker containers?

Identity and Access Management

Using user profiles to determine infrastructure load

Public wireless networks

Supercomputer architecture

Desktop virtualization

Stakeholder management

x86 platform architecture

Midrange systems architecture

Mainframe Architecture

Software Defined Data Center - SDDC

The Virtualization Model

What are concurrent users?

Performance and availability monitoring in levels

UX/UI has no business rules

Technical debt: a time related issue

Solution shaping workshops

Architecture life cycle

Project managers and architects

Using ArchiMate for describing infrastructures

Kruchten’s 4+1 views for solution architecture

The SEI stack of solution architecture frameworks

TOGAF and infrastructure architecture

The Zachman framework

An introduction to architecture frameworks

How to handle a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

Architecture Principles

Views and viewpoints explained

Stakeholders and their concerns

Skills of a solution architect architect

Solution architects versus enterprise architects

Definition of IT Architecture

What is Big Data?

How to make your IT "Greener"

What is Cloud computing and IaaS?

Purchasing of IT infrastructure technologies and services

IDS/IPS systems

IP Protocol (IPv4) classes and subnets

Infrastructure Architecture - Course materials

Introduction to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Fire prevention in the datacenter

Where to build your datacenter

Availability - Fall-back, hot site, warm site

Reliabilty of infrastructure components

Human factors in availability of systems

Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Performance - Design for use

Performance concepts - Load balancing

Performance concepts - Scaling

Performance concept - Caching

Perceived performance

Ethical hacking

The first computers

Open group ITAC /Open CA Certification


Recommended links

Ruth Malan
Gaudi site
Esther Barthel's site on virtualization
Eltjo Poort's site on architecture


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The postings on this site are my opinions and do not necessarily represent CGI’s strategies, views or opinions.

 

Copyright Sjaak Laan