Is It Possible to Change the Cyber Security Behaviours of Employees? Barriers and Promoters

The increase in cyber attacks cause individuals and businesses to face financial loss and reputation damage. Most cyber security studies ignore human factor and focus only on technological measures although the cyber security behaviors of employees are vital for the organisations. This paper aims to explore and discuss the role of employees in cyber security. In-depth interviews with eight cyber security experts were conducted through semi-structured, open-ended interviews. This study gives perspectives regarding the cyber security behaviors of employees, the barriers and promoters of secure behaviors in cyberspace. The findings mainly stem reasons of unsecure behaviors and solutions for them, and provide implications to companies for effective training and recommendations to adopt secure behaviors in the companies. Received: 4 March 2021 / Accepted: 6 May 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021

Software-Defined Networking: An Evolving Network Architecture—Programmability and Security Perspective

Software-defined networking is an evolving network architecture beheading the traditional network architecture focusing its disadvantages in a limited perspective. A couple of decades before, programming and networking were viewed as different domains which today with the lights of SDN bridging themselves together. This is to overcome the existing challenges faced by the networking domain and an attempt to propose cost-efficient effective and feasible solutions. Changes to the existing network architecture are inevitable considering the volume of connected devices and the data being held together. SDN introduces a decoupled architecture and brings customization within the network making it easy to configure, manage, and troubleshoot. This paper focuses on the evolving network architecture, the software-defined networking. Unlike a generic view on the evolving network, which makes work as a review, this work addresses various perspectives of the architecture leaving it an intermediate work in between the review of the literature and implementation, contributing towards factors like the design, programmability, security, security behaviors, and security lapses. This paper also analyses various weak points of the architecture and evolves the attack vectors in each plane leaving a conclusion to further progress towards identifying the impacts of the attacks and proposing mitigation strategies.

Understanding Food Security Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Thailand: A Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted worldwide food security including in Thailand. This review aims to understand people’s behaviors with regard to promoting food security during the COVID-19 pandemic by covering three main cases at a community level: the food bank, the food exchange, and the food pantry. A systematic review of news content analysis and in-depth interviews were employed for data collection. Based on integrated behavioral models of motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA), the theory of planned behavior (TPB), and value–belief–norm (VBN), key results indicated that altruistic values including beliefs in opinion leaders and the benefits from food security behaviors were influences on people’s practices. The attitude toward food as a crucial factor for living, the influence of family members and neighborhoods, and the perception of what constituted enough food led people’s behavioral intentions with regard to food security. The intrapersonal communication of opinion leaders was an important initial step linking to people’s understanding of others. The most frequent qualities of opinion leaders were: having a determination to help, thinking of the benefits of local people, and believing in community capacity. Self-reliance and procedural knowledge of how to behave were key messages, while personal media, local broadcasting towers, and social media were mainly employed to distribute these messages. Two-way and networking communication should be strengthened to promote sustainable food security during the crisis.

Toward a Unified View of Dynamic Information Security Behaviors

Extant information systems security research identified and examined a variety of individual as well as organizational factors influencing information security behaviors, but rarely offered sufficient theoretical insight into the interaction of the individual factors with the organizational context in impacting information security behaviors. To fill this gap, this study proposes a theoretical framework that builds on the concepts of organizational culture and sensemaking to show that: 1) information security behaviors are outcomes of sensemaking; and 2) sensemaking is enabled as well as constrained by organizational culture. This study further epitomizes that information security diagnosing, solving, and performing behaviors emerge as outcomes of sensemaking about information security during the organization's interactions with technology. Theoretical and pragmatic contributions of this framework and future research directions are also demonstrated.

Cell Phone Security

People use smartphones for a variety of purposes. However, little is known about users' mobile security awareness. This study examines mobile security behaviors of college students. The study's findings conclude that college students, while technologically savvy, may not take appropriate measures to protect their personal data from hackers and thieves.