HFCSWG

CSNG

Human Factors in Cyber Security Working Group

Our Working group will focus on bringing together academic researchers across the Dutch research landscape, around several areas of action. Many disciplines have proven useful in helping to secure the activities of the user. As understanding has grown, collectively we are at a point where it is advantageous for the research community of the Netherlands to bring this knowledge together in one place, and this working group will serve that purpose.

Foundation

We will organise a semi-annual meeting to discuss potential funding opportunities, collaborations, and other initiatives around the theme of the Working Group. We will support members of the research community in strengthening teaching material with new and related research developments in the domain of human factors in cybersecurity.

Goal

Objectives

Our goal is to put the human factor of cybersecurity at the centre by enabling users to achieve their primary objectives while adopting secure behaviours,Co rather than simply following prescribed security rules.

Knowledge-gathering: map threats to security, across discernible contexts, beginning first with home users and organizations, then refining this further, e.g., older adults, employees with outward-facing roles, etc.
Multi-disciplinary education: human factors in cyber security is a relatively young field, and this is seen clearly in how it is taught. There is no one reference publication that brings together all of the relevant knowledge and techniques; here there are intersections between computer science, HCI and usability, psychology, behaviour change, macro- and micro-economics, and more.
Research collaboration: provide a central place for experienced and early-career researchers in the area of human factors of cyber security to gather, to exchange lessons learned from the field – engaging with users in practice, but also translating those lessons into, e.g., tools and models – and invite novel thinking. We hope our Working Group will be a catalyst for joint publications and funding proposals, given the need for multi-disciplinary approaches to complex, sociotechnical challenges where security-related technologies and user goals meet.
One-stop shop for policymakers and organizations: research of human factors in cyber security should be driven by, and feed back into, what real users are doing. Our Working group aims to engage with real-world practitioners and real-world users alike. This extends to policymakers and others who are in a position to build the support and infrastructure around users to protect them in their computing and online activities.