25 Sep Step 5: Psychological Factors

Step 5: Psychological Factors

In the previous three steps, you completed simulation activities handling insiders. In the next few steps, you’ll examine intrusion motives/hacker psychology. In order to fully understand the Terry Childs case, it is important to understand that one’s internal motivations play a significant role in their actions.

Your next assignment will require you to create a Psychological Factor Matrix that summarizes types of hackers and actors, their motivations, and what sort of standards, policies, and guidelines would be most suitable to mitigate their impact. In order to prepare for this assignment, you will need to dig deeper into the psychological factors that affect hackers. Review the hacker psychology and sociological aspects resource on the hackers and actors topic page and document the following:

What psychological factors motivate hackers and actors (e.g., addiction, crime, greed, status)?

Give examples where these motivations were a factor in a cyberattack.

What can organizations do to be more proactive in identifying and addressing these threats?

While you do not need to submit your findings, they will be essential to the completion of your Profile Matrix in a later step.

Step 6: Hacking as an Addiction

After considering psychological factors of hackers and actors in the last step, you will expand your exploration into the concept of hacking as an addiction.

In examining the psychological factors of hackers, some mental health and criminal justice professionals contend that hacking is an “addiction” and causes obsessive, risk-taking behavior in a manner similar to illegal narcotics—hackers hack to “get high” from the thrill of breaking into a system and getting away with it. Examine and document your thoughts on the following questions:

Should policy makers look toward treatment, rather than incarceration, as to the disposition of hackers? Why or why not?

Think about this question in relation to the Childs case and how it will affect your recommendations.

Post your thoughts to the discussion board for feedback.

Step 7: Ethical vs. Unethical Hackers

As the cybersecurity field expands, the larger community discourse leads to changes in terminology. While some of our course materials may differentiate between the terms “hackers” and “crackers” as threat actors, we will use the terms “ethical hackers” and “nonethical hackers” to make the same differentiation. Learn about the different types of hackers, or nonstate actors, and document the following:

How do the profiles for ethical and unethical hackers differ?

Should these psychological attributes make a difference as to the amount of, or nature of the punishment meted out to those who are caught? Why or why not?

Describe how certain factors can also motivate ethical hackers, or those who defend against cyberattacks? (e.g., revenge, patriotism, fear of government abuse, pride, respect for the law, ownership, anger, retaliation).

While you do not need to submit your findings, they will be essential to the completion of your matrix in a later step.

Step 8: Hacker Profiling

In the previous step, you learned about the psychological factors that motivate hackers. In this step, you will go a bit further by learning how to profile hackers—a skill that is essential to the success of cybersecurity professionals. Read about hacker profiling and document the following:

How do profiles of ethical and unethical hackers differ?

While psychological profiling of criminals is not a new field, should we attempt to profile cybercriminals?

What sort of things do we already know about the personalities of cybercriminals?

Do we have enough evidence to indicate there is a distinct psychological pattern that would help in the apprehension of cybercriminals?

In the next step, you will use all the information you’ve learned about hackers to create a matrix.

Step 9: Define Standards, Policies, and Guidelines

Before you can complete the Profile Matrix and develop solutions for your company, you will need to take a closer look at how standards, policies, and guidelines affect a company’s security posture. You probably already have questions about what policies were in place prior to the Childs incident. In this step, you dig deeper and learn more about the difference between standards, policies, and guidelines by creating a two- to three-page comparison report. Your report should answer the following questions:

What is the difference between standards, policies, and guidelines?

How do they relate to one another?

How well do they work in securing networks and data within the organization?

This report is particularly important because it will affect the recommendations you make to your boss regarding the case. You will use this report as Appendix C to your presentation.

Submit your Standards, Policies, and Guidelines Definition for feedback.