Opening the door to multidisciplinary collaboration

Published: 31 Mar 2025, 2:10 p.m.

The depth of knowledge, expertise and guidance contained within the Cyber Security Body of Knowledge means it is an unrivalled resource for anyone interested in diving into the world of cyber security. For Lőrinc Thurnay, a self-taught software engineer, CyBOK proved invaluable, informing his personal and professional interest in how data security can positively shape socially-minded research projects. Lőrinc, who is based at the Center for E-Governance at Austria’s University for Continuing Education Krems, shares his insights and expertise around what it means – and why it matters – to make it easier for people from multiple disciplines to navigate this rich landscape.

You specialise in developing software prototypes and data analysis/engineering in applied research projects. How did your work lead you to CyBOK?

I was working on a research project that involved creating an interactive hardware simulation for a hydroelectric power plant. My focus was on creating a prototype that used the same technological and communications protocols that are commonly used in European power industries. The aim was to enable an organisation to anticipate cyber related attacks and give students/trainers more realistic training in learning how to identify and mitigate these attacks. To support this training tool, I needed to create targeted lesson plans which involved conducting some background research on curriculum development. That’s how I ran into CyBOK – it was both a fascinating and rich resource in terms of helping me to map the learning needs and knowledge gaps of the cohort I was working with.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with cyber security, it can be a vast and potentially daunting domain. As someone whose background comes from outside of the discipline, how did you approach this, and what was it about CyBOK that supported your endeavours?

My original studies were actually in e-governance and the effects of modern digital technologies on society and governance, and my master thesis explored how the cutting-edge e-governance technologies of Estonia could be utilised in a hypothetical situation where Estonians would have to flee their homeland for refuge. My eclectic range of interests, and my drive as someone who is entirely self-taught, means I’m used to – and enjoy – exploring unfamiliar terrains.

The hardware simulation project was the first official project that I’d worked on that was focused on cyber security. When I happened upon CyBOK, I was drawn to its broad inclusion of the humane aspects of cyber security as well as the legal and behavioural – it went beyond the technological aspects and offered a wealth of rich material. So much so that I found myself reading a lot of the Knowledge Areas for personal interest as much as for the purposes of the project!

The importance of agile interdisciplinary collaboration is another area that you’ve focused on, especially when it comes to translating complex databases into a universal language. You’re now working more directly with the CyBOK team on a new project that will improve ease of access for other multidisciplinary researchers. Why do you believe this is important?

As part of another project, I was part of a team of computer scientists and legal experts who looked at how to map Austrian open legal data in such a way that would make interdisciplinary collaboration a lot easier than it can often be in areas where there is a mass of complex information.

One of the key takeaways of that project was finding ways to communicate ideas, concepts and ambiguous terms from within specific disciplines to non-experts. Collaborations of that nature necessarily involve taking time to understand the needs of people from different disciplines and learning how to communicate clearly. It’s ultimately a richly rewarding experience and very much worth the effort because in the long run, it removes barriers to knowledge. There are parallels here with CyBOK in that, while CyBOK is not necessarily geared towards a general audience, there’s a lot of value in making the information accessible for non-experts – something that it already does with its podcasts and blogs.

With CyBOK, I was intrigued by how much information was available, and was motivated to take the time to find what I needed. However, it did come with some challenges – mainly because of the linear format of the document. I realised that it would be more helpful to be able to approach it in a non-sequential way that would make it more user-friendly, accessible and discoverable.

You’ve been working on a feasibility study that will ultimately lead to the creation of the first ever Wiki version of CyBOK. How do you see this building on your own experience, in terms of opening the door to other researchers from outside of cyber security?

This should certainly help CyBOK to go further. It will become much more valuable because it will be easier to find, and easier to use, which lowers the barrier of entry into CyBOK. It will be far less daunting to anyone who might have differing degrees of cyber security expertise and yet like me, has a personal and professional interest.

From the perspective of interdisciplinary collaboration, it will be much easier for researchers to discover and share what they find. If someone can read, click, highlight and share a particular topic of interest, and then readily navigate to a topic that may not be in their discipline, it will allow even a non-expert user to dip their toes into the proverbial waters of cyber security in a friendlier way. At the same time, the Wiki structure will preserve and enhance the project’s integrity through a more structured format.

How do you foresee this phase of CyBOK’s own technological development in terms of future-proofing its value?

The idea of the CyBOK Wiki is that it will present all of the existing Knowledge Areas and associated content in a well-segmented, cross-referenced browser-based resource. This will align with the project’s goals to improve user experience, by increasing its searchability by humans as well as search engines. The latter is important because a nicely formatted website will yield better results in a search engine like Google, which means that CyBOK will be more discoverable to more people.

My goal has been to gain as many insights as possible into the technical challenges and devise as many potential solutions to those challenges, so that ultimately, once it moves beyond the prototype stage, it will be easy for users to find what they need – whether that’s via inbuilt cross references, hyperlinks to glossaries or other sections branching off from each of the sections, and where relevant, subsections, in all of the Knowledge Areas.

How has the experience enriched your own work, and what’s next?

The nature of my research work means that I don’t often get to see the broader impact of it – either because a prototype doesn’t go all the way to completion, or because of the complexities involved in how research projects are run. Working on the CyBOK Wiki has been enormously satisfying, because I get to see the project’s evolution.

I’m now working on auditing the LaTeX source that holds CyBOK, which presents similar challenges in terms of usability and accessibility. As with any technical project, it suffers from technical debts, so to speak. My aim is to clean up the data and produce a neat, concise version. Ultimately, this should help maintain CyBOK and assist its future iterations.