Background. DevOps represents a set of principles and practices of the software development (Dev) and information technology operations (Ops) of the product lifecycle requirements. DevOps has become a buzzword in organizations because it is an agile software development offspring. Now-a-days, there is a shift in organizations from DevOps to DevSecOps, which is bringing in a higher level of security built into software delivery pipelines. DevSecOps ensures security is a core component in the workflow to implement secure development and operations processes of automating every aspect. Security inevitably includes issues like compliance in terms of security standards that are concerning with looming cybersecurity threats. There is little known about different concepts of assessing security compliance in terms of security standards in DevOps pipelines. Understanding the artefacts and their dependencies requirements in the software workflow are fundamental to demonstrate compliance. The thesis study proposes to ensure the IEC 62443-4-1 standard for secure product development in industrial systems is incorporated into the artefact model to capture the information related to security compliance. Objectives. The thesis aims to investigate the artefacts and identify its dependencies to develop and design an artefact model for DevSecOps. This artefact model has the possibility to measure security compliance with the IEC 62443-4-1 standard to ensure traceability in DevOps pipeline and evaluate the usability of it. Methods. In this qualitative research, we have conducted a literature review with snowballing to gather information on artefacts that undergo synthesis to develop and design the artefact model. We have conducted interviews with practitioners to collect the data on the usability of the artefact model. Results. The literature review with snowballing is done to identify ten papers in the final data set. We have identified 100 artefacts from the papers. The artefacts are categorized and matched according to practices and activities descriptions. The synthesis of the literature review artefacts provides the basis for designing the artefact model and its dependencies for DevSecOps workflow. The interview results are thematically coded and we have obtained a list of benefits, challenges, and security compliance barriers with DevOps pipelines. This process evaluates the practitioners’ understanding of the designed artefact model usability in the industry to assess the standard’s security compliance. Conclusions. The research study identifies the artefacts that help with developing the artefact model. It provides the practitioners’ understanding of the usability of the artefact model in the industry to meet the secure software development product life-cycle requirements according to the IEC 62443-4-1 standard. The results demonstrated the evidence of assessing the security compliance for DevSecOps workflow in DevOps pipeline.

This work deals with security compliance of computer systems, namely operating systems, applications and system services. Concept of security policies, their evaluation and their enforcement is described. Security compliance automation and the SCAP standard are presented. OpenSCAP project, which is used as an SCAP scanner, is described together with its tools and its usage. An idea to add support of Microsoft Windows within OpenSCAP, which was previously unsupported, is presented. The core part of the thesis is to identify necessary changes of OpenSCAP and to design an extension of this project. All these modifications are implemented. The solution is demonstrated on security policies for Windows. The solution is evaluated and further improvements are discussed.

Information security (IS)-related risks affect global public and private organizations on a daily basis. These risks may be introduced through technical or human-based activities, and can include fraud, hacking, malware, insider abuse, physical loss, mobile device misconfiguration or unintended disclosure. Numerous and diverse regulatory and contractual compliance requirements have been mandated to assist organizations proactively prevent these types of risks. Two constants are noted in these requirements. The first constant is requiring organizations to disseminate security policies addressing risk management through secure behavior. The second constant is communicating policies through IS awareness, training and education (ISATE) programs. Compliance requirements direct that these policies provide instruction about making compliant and positive security decisions to reduce risk. Policy-driven and organizationally-relevant ISATE content is understood to be foundational and critical to prevent security risk. The problem identified for investigation is inconsistency of the terms awareness, training and education as found in security-related regulatory, contractual and policy compliance requirements. Organizations are mandated to manage a rapidly increasing portfolio of inconsistent ISATE compliance requirements generated from many sources. Since there is no one set of common guidance for compliance, organizations struggle to meet global, diverse and inconsistent compliance requirements. Inconsistent policy-related content and instructions, generated from differing sources, may cause incorrect security behavior that can present increased security risk. Traditionally, organizations were required to provide only internally-developed programs, with content left to business, regulatory/contractual, and cultural discretion. Updated compliance requirements now require organizations to disseminate externally-developed content in addition to internally-provided content. This real-world business requirement may cause compliance risks due to inconsistent instruction, guidance gaps and lack of organizational relevance. The problem has been experienced by industry practitioners within the last five years due to increased regulatory and contractual compliance requirements. Prior studies have not yet identified specific impacts of multiple and differing compliance requirements on organizations. The need for organizational relevance in ISATE content has been explored in literature, but the amount of organizationally-relevant content has not been examined in balance of newer compliance mandates.The goal of the research project was to develop a standard content definition and framework. Experienced practitioners responsible for ISATE content within their organizations participated in a survey to validate definitions, content, compliance and organizational relevance requirements imposed on their organizations. Fifty-five of 80 practitioners surveyed (68.75% participation rate) provided responses to one or more sections of the survey. This research is believed to be the first to suggest a standardized content definition for ISATE program activities based on literature review, assessment of existing regulatory, contractual, standard and framework definitions and information obtained from specialized practitioner survey data. It is understood to be the first effort to align and synthesize cross-industry compliance requirements, security awareness topics and organizational relevance within information security awareness program content. Findings validated that multiple and varied regulatory and contractual compliance requirements are imposed on organizations. A lower number of organizations were impacted by third party program requirements than was originally expected. Negative and positive impacts of third party compliance requirements were identified. Program titles and content definitions vary in respondent organizations and are documented in a variety of organizational methods. Respondents indicated high acceptance of a standard definition of awareness, less so for training and education. Organizationally-relevant program content is highly important and must contain traditional and contemporary topics. Results are believed to be an original contribution to information/cyber security practitioners, with findings of interest to academic researchers, standards/framework bodies, auditing/risk management practitioners and learning/development specialists.

Informationssäkerhet är ett område som kommit att sättas alltmer i fokus hos organisationer. Tidigare har främst tekniska lösningar för att skydda viktig information fått uppmärksamhet, det är först på senare tid som informationssäkerhet har börjat uppfattas som ett komplext område som innefattar såväl tekniska, som organisatoriska och mänskliga faktorer. För att eftersträva en god informationssäkerhet inom organisationen bör ett grundligt arbete läggas på att utveckla informationssäkerhetspolicys och säkerhetsansvariga måste kontinuerligt utbilda och skapa medvetenhet hos anställda kring vilka hot som finns mot organisationen ifall informationssäkerhetsbestämmelser inte efterlevs. Huvudsyftet i föreliggande studie har varit att undersöka vilka faktorer som styr anställdas efterlevnad av informationssäkerhetspolicys. Ytterligare delsyfte har varit att undersöka hur den faktiska efterlevnaden av informationssäkerhetsbestämmelser avspeglar sig inom två vårdverksamheter i Landstinget i Östergötland. För att uppfylla studiens syfte har fallstudier genomförts där såväl observationer som intervjuer med personal legat till grund för datainsamlingen. Resultatet visar att säkerhetsmedvetandet och efterlevnaden av säkerhetsbestämmelser inom de undersökta organisationerna är tämligen god, men det finns skillnader i graden av efterlevnad. Resultaten visar att anställda i viss mån hoppar över säkerhetsbestämmelser för att effektivisera sitt arbete. Den vanligaste säkerhetsbestämmelsen som visade på bristande efterlevnad var att en del anställda slarvade med att logga ut eller låsa datorn då denna lämnades oövervakad. Faktorer som visat sig vara avgörande för ifall säkerhetsbestämmelser efterlevs eller inte är bland annat ifall den anställde anser att beteendet övervakas, hur väl medveten man är kring konsekvensen av att säkerhetsbestämmelser inte efterlevs, samt hur stor sannolikhet man anser det vara att hotet realiseras. Ytterligare faktorer som visat sig spela roll är ifall den anställde anser att säkerhetsbestämmelsen ligger i konflikt med andra intressen, såsom effektivitet eller bekvämlighet. För att kunna införa effektiva policyåtgärder krävs det därmed att policyutvecklare förstår vad som motiverar anställda till att följa säkerhetsbestämmelser och vilka värderingar som ligger bakom deras beteende. / Information security has grown into a field of study that has gained increasingly attention within organizations. In the early days focus of the field has primerly been on technical solutions in order to protect information. Only recently information security has come to be seen as a complex area including both technical, organizational and human factors. In order to strive for a high degree of information security within the organization, emphasis has to be placed on developing a functional information security policy. Just as important is that security managers continually educate and create awareness amongst employees with regards to existing threats if information security rules are not respected. The main purpose in regards to this study has been to investigate the determinants of employees' compliance with information security policies. A further aim of the study has been to examine how the actual compliance of information security regulations is reflected in two healthcare clinics in the county council of Östergötland. In order to fulfill the purpose of the study, case studies were carried out in the clinics, where both filed studies and interviews with staff members formed the basis for data collection. The results show that security awareness and compliance with safety regulations within the surveyed organizations are fairly good, but there are differences in the level of compliance. The results show that employees to some degree overlook safety rules in order to make their work more efficient. The most common security rule that showed non-compliance was where employees occasionally did not logg off or lock the computer as it was left unattended. Determinants that showed to have an influence on whether or not employees comply with information security policys are among other factors to what extent the employee belives that the behavior is being monitored, awareness about conseqences from not complying with the security rules, as well as to what extent one belives that the actual threat occurs. Additional determinants that were found to have an influence on the actual behavior with regards to compliance is to what extent the employee considers the regulations to be in conflict with other interests, such as efficiency or convenience. In order to introduce effective policy measures knowledge is needed where policy makers understand what motivates employees to comply with safety rules, as well as the values that underlie their behavior.

Research accentuates that end-users‘ noncompliance with information security policy (ISP) is a key concern for government just as it is for the private sector. Although awareness and training programmes are important factors impacting employees‘ intentions to comply with an organisation‘s ISP, it can be argued that there is insufficient empirical evidence to support this assertion. To address this gap, this study seeks to expand research on ISP compliance by focusing on attitudes as targets of change. A research model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour was proposed to illustrate the influence of ISP awareness training on end-users‘ attitudes towards complying with their organisation‘s ISP. Relevant hypotheses were developed to test the research conceptualisation. A survey and an experiment was undertaken to collect the data from a sample of 173 end-users of a single government organisation in one province. The data was captured and analysed using a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Furthermore, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test whether the overall model appears to be a good fit to support the hypotheses. The reliability, validity, and model fit were found to be statistically significant, and three out of five research hypotheses were supported. Overall this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing an understanding of the methods that can be used to encourage end-users‘ ISP compliance behaviour through an attitudinal shift, thereby targeting end-users‘ attitude as a means to improve information security policy compliance. Implications of the findings are further discussed in the paper. / Information Technology / M. Tech. (Information Technology)

Information security research shows that employees are a source of some of the security incidents in the organisation. This often results from failure to comply with the Information Security Policies (ISPs). The question is, therefore, how to improve information security behaviour of employees so that it complies with the ISPs. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of information security behaviour, especially how it can be improved, from an intrinsic motivation perspective. A review of the literature suggested that research in information security behaviour is still predominantly based on the extrinsic perspective, while the intrinsic perspective has not received as much attention. This resulted in the study being carried out from the perspective of the self-determination theory (SDT) since this theory has also not received as much attention in the study of information security behaviour. The study then proposed an information security compliant behaviour conceptual model based on the self-determination theory, (ISCBMSDT). Based on this model, a questionnaire, the ISCBMSDT questionnaire, was developed using the Human Aspects of Information Security Questionnaire and SDT. Using this questionnaire, a survey (n = 263) was carried out at a South African university and responses were received from the academic, administrative and operational staff. The following statistical analysis of the data was carried out: exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), independent samples test (t-tests) and Pearson correlation analysis. The responses to the survey questions suggest that autonomy questions received positive perception followed by competence questions and relatedness questions. The correlation analysis results show the existence of a statistically significant relationship between competence and autonomy factors. Also, a partial significant relationship between autonomy and relatedness factors as well as between competence and relatedness factors was observed. The exploratory factor analysis that was performed on the questionnaire produced 11 factors. Cronbach alpha was then computed for the eleven factors and all were found to be above 0.7, thus suggesting that the questionnaire is valid and reliable. The results of the research study also suggest that competence and autonomy could be more important than relatedness in directing information security behaviour among employees. / School of Computing / M. Tech. (Information Technology)