Human Aspects of Cybersecurity 7.5 credits

Cybersecurity is often treated as a purely technical topic, even though most incidents are made possible by human mistakes or attackers who exploit human nature. Cybersecurity is a socio-technical phenomenon resulting from the interplay between technology, humans and the social environment where this interplay takes place. This course focuses on the human aspects of cybersecurity and begins with an exploration of what we expect users to do to comply with cybersecurity requirements. Then, humans’ ability to comply with those requirements is explored by discussing how the social environment, personal traits and cognitive abilities shape cybersecurity behaviour. The students are also introduced to models that explain different aspects of how cybersecurity behaviour is formed. During the course, the students will be introduced to human-centred design methods and learn how to apply those to assess and evaluate cybersecurity concepts, solutions, and systems. The course includes the following elements: - Exploration of models that are commonly used to explain cybersecurity behaviour, (e.g., FOGG and Protection Motivation Theory) - Human-centered design methods, such as the double diamond process - Exploration of the usable security paradigm