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，还依赖于对意想不到的人类行为造成的新漏洞的适当保护。该项目将直接解决用户的情境行为及其对网络安全的影响。它参与建模决策过程的挑战，并将其整合到人类网络交互中。如果可以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和将安全漏洞视为基础设施设计缺陷的观点，并将人视为网络安全的一个不可或缺的因素。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在决策过程建模方面的研究方法。利用该模型预测用户心理状态和网络变量发生变化时的行为，极大地帮助网络管理者获得对网络脆弱性的最新评估。研究工作包括三个重点：1)研究人类网络行为的理论框架，2)网络环境中人类受试者的实验研究，以及3)全面的人际网络系统级漏洞分析。该项目的主要成果是一个将人为因素纳入网络脆弱性分析的综合框架。

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.