Security Threats to Critical Infrastructure: The Human Factor

Ghafir, Ibrahim; Saleem, Jibran; Hammoudeh, Mohammad; Faour, Hanan; Prenosil, Vaclav; Jaf, Sardar; Jabbar, Sohail; Baker, Thar

Abstract

In the 21st century, globalisation made corporate boundaries invisible and difficult to manage. This new macroeconomic transformation caused by globalisation introduced new challenges for critical infrastructure management. By replacing manual tasks with automated decision making and sophisticated technology, no doubt we feel much more secure than half a century ago. As the technological advancement takes root, so does the maturity of security threats. It is common that today’s critical infrastructures are operated by non-computer experts, e.g., nurses in healthcare, soldiers in military or firefighters in emergency services. In such challenging applications, protecting against insider attacks is often neither feasible nor economically possible, but these threats can be managed using suitable risk management strategies. Security technologies, e.g., firewalls, help protect data assets and computer systems against unauthorised entry. However, one area which is often largely ignored is the human factor of system security. Through social engineering techniques, malicious attackers are able to breach organisational security via people interactions. This paper presents a security awareness training framework, which can be used to train operators of critical infrastructure, on various social engineering security threats such as spear phishing, baiting, pretexting, amongst others.

Citation

Ghafir, I., Saleem, J., Hammoudeh, M., Faour, H., Prenosil, V., Jaf, S., …Baker, T. (2018). Security Threats to Critical Infrastructure: The Human Factor. Journal of Supercomputing, 74(10), 4986-5002. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-018-2337-2

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 20, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 26, 2018
• Publication Date: Oct 31, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 29, 2018
• Journal: Journal of Supercomputing
• Print ISSN: 0920-8542
• Electronic ISSN: 1573-0484
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 74
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 4986-5002
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-018-2337-2
• Keywords: Critical Infrastructure Security, Security Awareness, Cyber Security Training, Work Based Security Training, Security Threats Against Critical Infrastructure
• Related Public URLs: http://rdcu.be/JU5D