Hindering hackers

The UK Government-funded Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network has awarded a team of security and human behaviour experts a contract to study human vulnerabilities in security systems.

The winning consortium includes leading academic researchers with expertise in psychology, criminology, computing, management and marketing, and security practitioners from some of the UK's leading companies.

The study reflects concern that more needs to be done to help organisations and individual users of cyber space protect themselves and the UK's critical infrastructure from the increase in cyber attacks and organised e-crime. Criminals and hackers frequently dupe users into releasing sensitive and valuable information or introducing viruses onto their computers and associated networks, often employing sophisticated social engineering techniques to exploit these human weaknesses.

The winning team will outline best practice and make recommendations as to how the IT industry can encourage computer users to behave in a far more secure manner when surfing the internet and doing business in cyber space. These recommendations will take the form of a white paper that will be produced in the spring and made publicly available to ensure the study benefits the widest possible audience.