User-Centered Security

I’ve frequently heard users complain to one another about the relevance, timeliness, or applicability of the training they just completed while on a break after a mandatory organizational SETA session. As cybersecurity professionals, we understand that SETA programs are a vital part of an organization’s information security posture. Verizon’s survey of databreaches shows that years of SETA programs are having an effect, helping make users more resistant to the temptation to click malicious links and more likely to report them during security audits. However, these connections are not as obvious to our users, who see SETA content as competing with work activities more tied to their core business functions. There are a few tricks I’ve found to help users take SETA training more seriously. First, by tying information security to the core organizational mission. If you can demonstrate to your users that the impact of the time spent learning about information security benefits the ...

As much as we would like to be able to defend every part of our information systems environment to the utmost, at the end of the day organizations have limited resources and we need to prioritize our efforts. An important part of risk prioritization is determining the value of our various assets, so we can put a dollar figure on the threat posed by a given risk. As Whitman and Mattord discuss, we could use our sunk costs to determine the value of a given IT asset or determine the potential cost of replacement of the asset—but it is better if we can determine how much value the asset is adding for the organization and use that in our cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately, as IT professionals we know a lot about the costs to create or maintain a given asset or system but are not well-positioned to know how useful the system is at the end of the day. However, our users are much better positioned to know the value of a given asset—and we can leverage them to get that informatio...