Assignment: Human Factors and Cyber Policy

Course Objective: Critically assess the intellectual property and digital rights management and other legal issues that exist in cyberspace. Apply concepts covered throughout the 12-week cybersecurity policy course. Design effective organizational cybersecurity standards and policies.

Competencies: Critical thinking, team-building skills, communication skills

Directions:

Incorporating concepts from the entire semester, each team prepares an abbreviated report including recommended cybersecurity policy for the organization described in the Week 6 Interactive Case Study. The report and policy recommendations should not focus on technology controls but should instead emphasize the human factors related to cybersecurity policy. Teams will apply the cultural, psychological and social concepts presented in the course. Throughout the semester we have studied how human factors can influence policy choices for domestic and international cybersecurity issues.

Some of the Human Factors we have studied:

1. Ethics and Culture
2. Psychological Motivations
3. Anonymity

Each team will select FOUR cybersecurity topics from the list provided below, and will research the influence of Human Factors on recommended cybersecurity policy controls.

Writing Assignment: Choose (4) from the Topics List near the bottom of these instructions, then answer these questions:

• What are the major cybersecurity issues related to each of the 4 topics chosen?
• What policy controls would your team recommend to help manage each of the 4 cybersecurity issues?
• Discuss how Human Factors influence the effectiveness of these recommended policy controls.

Discussion for each topic should include --

A. The topic name and important security issues (vulnerability issues, or mission goals/conflicts issues, or legal/liability issues),

B. Recommended policy controls, and

C. How or why human factors can influence the effectiveness of each recommended policy control.

Hint: To improve chances for a higher score, construct an outline of the questions asked before starting any research or writing. The outline is not submitted, but it should be used to help create the TOC. The Introduction should demonstrate that a careful outline was done before writing, and the introduction should also preview the content of the research paper.

Choose FOUR topics from the list below.

Topics List:

1. Zero Day Exploits employed for economic or military advantage (five pages on this topic ONLY)
2. Cyber Crime, Cyber Terrorism and threats to SCADA systems
3. Private sector businesses compliance with government IT security regulations to protect national security
4. Meta-Data collected and used by the Private sector and Public sector
5. Vulnerability assessments for Mobile Devices in the BYOD environment
6. Threats to copyright and ownership of intellectual property.