The world continues to be plagued by cyber incidents that impact businesses, schools, hospitals, and government institutions. Some organizations have given cybersecurity a line item on the annual budget, while others have created dedicated departments to improve their technical defenses. Executive boards and C-level executives have shifted from an…

We are currently in a century of data where massive amount of data are collected and processed every day, and machine learning plays a critical role in automatically processing the data and mining useful information from it for making decisions. Despite the wide and successful applications of machine learning in different fields, the robustness of…

Educators of graduate cybersecurity education lack decision methodologies to aid in selecting and prioritizing cybersecurity criteria and tools to provide hands-on learning in cyber courses. Educators are challenged with keeping the cybersecurity tools in the education curriculum relevant and updated. The risk of not doing so, is possibly…

The purpose of this study is to identify the best model that explains the relationship between conflicting risk structures and decision quality. Using confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression techniques as statistical methods, the author confirmed that changes in the conflicting risk structures correlated with changes in decision…

This dissertation recommends research to investigate the effects inhibitory control and perceptual attention have on the cyber security decision-making process. Understanding the effects that inhibitory control and perceptual attention have on the security decision-making process will allow for better defenses to be developed against social…

Despite multiple national, educational, and industry initiatives, women continue to be underrepresented in the cybersecurity field. Only 11% of cybersecurity professionals, globally, are female. This contributes to the growing overall shortage of workers in the field. This research addressed the significant underrepresentation of females in the…

The purpose of this mixed-methods investigation was to determine how teachers and parents understood and educated themselves on cyber safety. This research explored how teachers and parents found and used resources available to stay informed of the constant threats and changes for students while online. The amount of time young people spend with…

Email attacks comprise an overwhelming majority of the daily attacks on modern enterprise. "Phishing" is the leading attack vector for the world's most dangerous threats such as the so-called, Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), and hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec. The leading mitigation strategy is a combination of user…

Attacks on computer systems continue to be a problem. The majority of the attacks target home computer users. To help mitigate the attacks some companies provide security awareness training to their employees. However, not all people work for a company that provides security awareness training and typically, home computer users do not have the…

The research problem that inspired this effort is the challenge of managing the security of systems in large-scale heterogeneous networked environments. Human intervention is slow and limited: humans operate at much slower speeds than networked computer communications and there are few humans associated with each network. Enabling each node in the…

As the popularity of online banking Websites has increased, the security of these sites has become increasingly critical as attacks against these sites are on the rise. However, the design decisions made during construction of the sites could make usability more difficult, where the user has difficulty making good security decisions. This study…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate six factors that may influence adoption of virtual private network (VPN) technologies in small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Prior research indicated small businesses employing fewer than 100 workers do not adopt VPN technology at the same rate as larger competitors, and the…

This dissertation research studied how different degrees of knowledge of online security risks affect B2C (business-to-consumer) e-commerce consumer decision making. Online information security risks, such as identity theft, have increasingly become a major factor inhibiting the potential growth of e-commerce. On the other hand, e-commerce…

An increasing number of firms rely on highly interconnected information networks. In such environments, defense against cyber attacks is complicated by residual risks caused by the interdependence of information security decisions of firms. IT security is affected not only by a firm's own management strategies but also by those of others. This…

The nation's critical infrastructure, information systems, and telecommunication networks are vulnerable and threatened by an ever-growing number of attacks in cyberspace. An essential element of the nation's comprehensive approach to cybersecurity is the ability for the Department of Defense to protect and defend its information enterprise.…