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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.



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About Sjaak Laan

Sjaak Laan

I am 45 years old and married with Angelina. We have 3 children of 12, 7 and 5 years old. We live in The Netherlands, in a place called Drachten

I work for Logica as Principal IT Architect. I have 20 years IT experience.

I own the following certificates:

ITAC Master Certified IT Architect

CISSP_logo CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)


TOGAF8_Certified_web TOGAF Certified Architect



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I manage my business contacts using Linkedin.


I can be reached through sjaak.laan [ a t ] gmail [dot] com.

This site states my opinion only, and not nessecarily the opinion of my employer or of the clients I work for.