EAGER: Factoring User Behavior into Network Security Analysis

该项目将调查网络安全中的人为因素。网络系统的安全不仅依赖于对已知漏洞的适当保护，还依赖于对由意外的人类行为引起的新漏洞的适当保护。该项目将直接解决用户的情景行为及其对网络安全的影响。它致力于为决策过程建模并将其整合到人-网络交互中的挑战。如果能够预测用户的行为并估计其对网络漏洞的影响，网络管理员就可以有效地关闭漏洞，避免严重的安全漏洞。这将改变将网络视为静态基础设施的观点，将安全漏洞视为基础设施的设计缺陷，并将人视为网络安全不可或缺的因素。该项目涉及行为科学的理论和实验研究，以及计算机科学和统计学的研究方法在建模决策过程中的作用。当用户的心理状态和网络变量发生变化时，利用该模型来预测用户的行为，这将极大地帮助网络管理员获得最新的网络脆弱性评估。这项工作包括三个方面：1)研究人类网络行为的理论框架；2)网络环境中人类主体的实验研究；3)全面的人-网系统级脆弱性分析。该项目的主要成果是在网络脆弱性分析中纳入人的因素的综合框架。

The project will investigate human factors in network security. The security of network systems relies on proper protection from not only known vulnerabilities, but also new vulnerabilities resulting from unexpected human behavior. The project will directly address a user's situational behavior and its consequence on network security. It engages in the challenges of modeling decision-making process and integrating it in the human-network interaction. If the user's behavior can be predicted and its impact on network vulnerability can be estimated, the network manager can effectively close vulnerabilities and avoid grave security breaches. This will change the view of a network as a static infrastructure and security holes as design flaws of the infrastructure, and it will regard humans as an integral factor in network security.The project involves theoretical and experimental study from behavioral science and research methodology from computer science and statistics in modeling the decision-making process. It uses the model to predict user behavior when the user's psychological state and network variables have changed, which would greatly assist the network manager to attain an up-to-date assessment of network vulnerability. The work includes three thrusts: 1) a theoretical framework for studying human cyber behavior, 2) experimental study on human subjects in a cyber environment, and 3) comprehensive human-network system-level vulnerability analysis. The major outcome of this project is an integrated framework to include human factors in network vulnerability analysis.