In this thesis, the author hypothesizes that the use of computationally intensive mathematical operations in password authentication protocols can lead to security vulnerabilities in those protocols. In order to test this hypothesis: 1. A generalized algorithm for cryptanalysis was formulated to perform a clogging attack (a formof denial of service) on protocols that use computationally intensive modular exponentiation to guarantee security. 2. This technique was then applied to cryptanalyze four recent password authentication protocols, to determine their susceptibility to the clogging attack. The protocols analyzed in this thesis differ in their usage of factors (smart cards, memory drives, etc.) or their method of communication (encryption, nonces, timestamps, etc.). Their similarity lies in their use of computationally intensivemodular exponentiation as amediumof authentication. It is concluded that the strengths of all the protocols studied in this thesis can be combined tomake each of the protocols secure from the clogging attack. The conclusion is supported by designing countermeasures for each protocol against the clogging attack.

The availability of smart device capabilities, easy to use apps, and collaborative capabilities has increased the expectations for the technology experience of employees. In addition, enterprises are adopting SaaS cloud-based systems that employees can access anytime, anywhere using their personal, mobile device. BYOD could drive an IT evolution for powerful device capabilities and easy to use apps, but only if the information security concerns can be addressed. This research proposed to determine the acceptance rate of BYOD in organizations, the decision making approach, and significant factors that led to the successful adoption of BYOD using the expertise of experienced internal control professionals. The approach and factors leading to the decision to permit the use of BYOD was identified through survey responses, which was distributed to approximately 5,000 members of the Institute for Internal Controls (IIC). The survey participation request was opened by 1,688 potential respondents, and 663 total responses were received for a response rate of 39%. Internal control professionals were targeted by this study to ensure a diverse population of organizations that have implemented or considered implementation of a BYOD program were included. This study provided an understanding of how widely the use of BYOD was permitted in organizations and identified effective approaches that were used in making the decision. In addition, the research identified the factors that were influential in the decision making process. This study also explored the new information security risks introduced by BYOD. The research argued that there were several new risks in the areas of access, compliance, compromise, data protection, and control that affect a company’s willingness to support BYOD. This study identified new information security concerns and risks associated with BYOD and suggested new elements of governance, risk management, and control systems that were necessary to ensure a secure BYOD program. Based on the initial research findings, future research areas were suggested.

Although reports of identity theft continue to be widely published, users continue to post an increasing amount of personal information online, especially within social networking sites (SNS) and e-learning systems (ELS). Research has suggested that many users lack awareness of the threats that risky online personal information sharing poses to their personal information. However, even among users who claim to be aware of security threats to their personal information, actual awareness of these security threats is often found to be lacking. Although attempts to raise users' awareness about the risks of sharing their personal information have become more common, it is unclear if users are unaware of the risks, or are simply unwilling or unable to protect themselves. Research has also shown that users' habits may also have an influence on their practices. However, user behavior is complex, and the relationship between habit and practices is not clear. Habit theory has been validated across many disciplines, including psychology, genetics, and economics, with very limited attention in IS. Thus, the main goal of this study was to assess the influence of users' personal information sharing awareness (PISA) on their personal information sharing habits (PISH) and personal information sharing practices (PISP), as well as to compare the three constructs between SNS and ELS. Although habit has been studied significantly in other disciplines, a limited number of research studies have been conducted regarding IS usage and habit. Therefore, this study also investigated the influence of users' PISH on their PISP within the contexts of SNS and ELS. An empirical survey instrument was developed based on prior literature to collect and analyze data relevant to these three constructs. Path analysis was conducted on the data to determine the influence of users' PISA on their PISH and PISP, as well as the influence of users' PISH on their PISP. This study also utilized ANCOVA to determine if, and to what extent, any differences may exist between users' PISA, PISH, and PISP within SNS and ELS. The survey was deployed to the student body and faculty members at a small private university in the Southeast United States; a total of 390 responses was received. Prior to final data analysis, pre-analysis data screening was performed to ensure the validity and accuracy of the collected data. Cronbach's Alpha was performed on PISA, PISH, and PISP, with all three constructs demonstrating high reliability. PISH was found to be the most significant factor evaluated in this study, as users' habits were determined to have the strongest influence on their PISP within the contexts of SNS and ELS. The main contribution of this study was to advance the understanding of users' awareness of information security threats, their personal information sharing habits, and their personal information sharing practices. Information gained from this study may help organizations in the development of better approaches to the securing of users' personal information.

Abstract Microsoft’s Windows Operating System provides a logging service that collects, filters and stores event messages from the kernel and applications into log files (.evt and .evtx). Volatility, the leading open source advanced memory forensic suite, currently allows users to extract these events from memory dumps of Windows XP and Windows 2003 machines. Currently there is no support for users to extract the event logs (.evtx) from Windows Vista, Win7 or Win8 memory dumps, and Volatility users have to rely on outside software in order to do this. This thesis discusses a newly developed evtxlogs.py plugin for Volatility, which allows users the same functionality with Windows Vista, Win7 and Win8 that they had with Windows XP and Win 2003’s evtlogs.py plugin. The plugin is based on existing mechanisms for parsing Windows Vista-format event logs, but adds fully integrated support for these logs to Volatility.

It is commonly acknowledged that using Internet applications is an integral part of an individual’s everyday life, with more than three billion users now using Internet services across the world; and this number is growing every year. Unfortunately, with this rise in Internet use comes an increasing rise in cyber-related crime. Whilst significant effort has been expended on protecting systems from outside attack, only more recently have researchers sought to develop countermeasures against insider attack. However, for an organisation, the detection of an attack is merely the start of a process that requires them to investigate and attribute the attack to an individual (or group of individuals). The investigation of an attack typically revolves around the analysis of network traffic, in order to better understand the nature of the traffic flows and importantly resolves this to an IP address of the insider. However, with mobile computing and Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP), which results in Internet Protocol (IP) addresses changing frequently, it is particularly challenging to resolve the traffic back to a specific individual. The thesis explores the feasibility of profiling network traffic in a biometric-manner in order to be able to identify users independently of the IP address. In order to maintain privacy and the issue of encryption (which exists on an increasing volume of network traffic), the proposed approach utilises data derived only from the metadata of packets, not the payload. The research proposed a novel feature extraction approach focussed upon extracting user-oriented application-level features from the wider network traffic. An investigation across nine of the most common web applications (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dropbox, Google, Outlook, Skype, BBC and Wikipedia) was undertaken to determine whether such high-level features could be derived from the low-level network signals. The results showed that whilst some user interactions were not possible to extract due to the complexities of the resulting web application, a majority of them were. Having developed a feature extraction process that focussed more upon the user, rather than machine-to-machine traffic, the research sought to use this information to determine whether a behavioural profile could be developed to enable identification of the users. Network traffic of 27 users over 2 months was collected and processed using the aforementioned feature extraction process. Over 140 million packets were collected and processed into 45 user-level interactions across the nine applications. The results from behavioural profiling showed that the system is capable of identifying users, with an average True Positive Identification Rate (TPIR) in the top three applications of 87.4%, 75% and 61.9% respectively. Whilst the initial study provided some encouraging results, the research continued to develop further refinements which could improve the performance. Two techniques were applied, fusion and timeline analysis techniques. The former approach sought to fuse the output of the classification stage to better incorporate and manage the variability of the classification and resulting decision phases of the biometric system. The latter approach sought to capitalise on the fact that whilst the IP address is not reliable over a period of time due to reallocation, over shorter timeframes (e.g. a few minutes) it is likely to reliable and map to the same user. The results for fusion across the top three applications were 93.3%, 82.5% and 68.9%. The overall performance adding in the timeline analysis (with a 240 second time window) on average across all applications was 72.1%. Whilst in terms of biometric identification in the normal sense, 72.1% is not outstanding, its use within this problem of attributing misuse to an individual provides the investigator with an enormous advantage over existing approaches. At best, it will provide him with a user’s specific traffic and at worst allow them to significantly reduce the volume of traffic to be analysed.

The key theme of this research is the planning and management of information security and in particular, the research focuses on the involvement of information stakeholders in this process. The main objective of the research is to study the ownership of, and acceptance of responsibility for, information security measures by stakeholders having an interest in that information.

Due to the universal use of technology and its pervasive connection to the world, organisations have become more exposed to frequent and various threats. Therefore, organisations today are giving more attention to information security as it has become a vital and challenging issue. Many researchers have noted that the significance of information security, particularly information security policies and awareness, is growing due to increasing use of IT and computerization. In the last 15 years, the State of Qatar has witnessed remarkable growth and development of its civilization, having embraced information technology as a base for innovation and success. The country has undergone tremendous improvements in the health care, education and transport sectors. Information technology plays a strategic role in building the country's knowledge-based economy. Due to Qatar s increasing use of the internet and connection to the global environment, it needs to adequately address the global threats arising online. As a result, the scope of this research is to investigate information security in Qatar and in particular the National Information Assurance (NIA) policy. There are many solutions for information security some technical and some non-technical such as policies and making users aware of the dangers. This research focusses on enhancing information security through non-technical solutions. The aim of this research is to improve Qatari organisations information security processes by developing a comprehensive Information Security Management framework that is applicable for implementation of the NIA policy, taking into account Qatar's culture and environment. To achieve the aim of this research, different research methodologies, strategies and data collection methods will be used, such as a literature review, surveys, interviews and case studies. The main findings of this research are that there is insufficient information security awareness in organisations in Qatar and a lack of a security culture, and that the current NIA policy has many barriers that need to be addressed. The barriers include a lack of information security awareness, a lack of dedicated information security staff, and a lack of a security culture. These barriers are addressed by the proposed information security management framework, which is based on four strategic goals: empowering Qataris in the field of information security, enhancing information security awareness and culture, activating the Qatar National Information Assurance policy in real life, and enabling Qatar to become a regional leader in information security. The research also provides an information security awareness programme for employees and university students. At the time of writing this thesis, there are already indications that the research will have a positive impact on information security in Qatar. A significant example is that the information security awareness programme for employees has been approved for implementation at the Ministry of Administrative Development Labour and Social Affairs (ADLSA) in Qatar. In addition, the recommendations proposed have been communicated to the responsible organisations in Qatar, and the author has been informed that each organisation has decided to act upon the recommendations made.

No description available.

Information security programs are instituted by organizations to provide guidance to their users who handle their data and systems. The main goal of these programs is to protect the organization's information assets through the creation and cultivation of a positive information security culture within the organization. As the collection and use of data expands in all economic sectors, the threat of data breach due to human error increases. Employee's behavior towards information security is influenced by the organizations information security programs and the overall information security culture. This study examines the human factors of an information security program and their effect on the information security culture. These human factors consist of stringency of organizational policies, behavior deterrence, employee attitudes towards information security, training and awareness, and management support of the information security programs. A survey questionnaire was given to employees in the Florida College System to measure the human aspects of the information security programs. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to investigate the relationships between the variables in the study using IBM® SPSS® Amos 24 software. The study results show that management support and behavior deterrence have a significant positive relationship with information security. Additionally, the results show no significant association between information security culture and organization policies, employee commitment and employee awareness. This suggests a need for further refinement of the model and the survey tool design to properly assess human factors of information security programs and their effects on the organizational security culture.

The National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System is the central informational hub located at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Its purpose is to provide network subscriptions to all Federal, state and local level law enforcement agencies while increasing information collaboration across all domains. The National Data Exchange users must satisfy the Advanced Permission Requirements, confirming the terms of N-DEx information use, and the Verification Requirement (verifying the completeness, timeliness, accuracy, and relevancy of N-DEx information) through coordination with the record-owning agency (Management, 2018). A network infection model is proposed to simulate the spread impact of various cyber-attacks within Federal, state and local level law enforcement networks that are linked together through the topologies merging with the National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System as the ability to manipulate the live network is limited. The model design methodology is conducted in a manner that creates a level of organization from the state level to the local level of law enforcement agencies allowing for each organizational infection probability to be calculated and entered, thus making the model very specific in nature for determining spread or outbreaks of cyber-attacks among law enforcement agencies at all levels. This research will enable future researchers to further develop a model that is capable of detecting weak points within an information structure when multiple topologies merge, allowing for more secure operations among law enforcement networks.