CyBOK in Practice - Testimonials
"Cybersecurity Professionals are blessed with the opportunity to work in virtually any kind of organization during their career and, despite being a rare advantage, it represents an enormous challenge since it requires the development of a very sharp soft skill set to cope with different organizational cultures and dynamics over time. That's where CyBOK Chapter 4 really shines.. see more
In my specific case, as Head of Cybersecurity at a highly hierarchical environment (a military complex with about 10 units and 2.000 employees), the personality of commander/chief of staff is quite determinant to pinpoint where the average "user comfort" is supposed to be. This cultural aspect brings us lots of human-related problems since our security controls tend to become a bit unstable over time in the security spectrum - sometimes too loose, sometimes too strict.
As CyBOK fairly states, unfriendly controls often push users to seek shadow IT solutions and to create negative attitudes toward security - and even IT staff. Fortunately, CyBOK also provides very clear guidelines to address this problem efficiently and practice the so called Security Hygiene in an effective manner.
My bottom line is that human factors matter not only for IT <-> users relationship, but also to help beaconing IT <-> Senior Management conversation. CyBOK steps in at this point as a valuable third-party reference that can help to calibrate security controls, fostering the creation of a common - and hopefully long term - understanding. After all, they may disagree with me, but they will never doubt General MacArthur words (see page 161)!
Hope this brief testimony helps you to understand how your material is positively impacting my day-to-day life as a Cybersecurity professional."
"I think it's a fantastic resource and I use it to support my own understanding of cyber security and keep my knowledge up to date. The authorship reads like a Hall of Fame. I see it as the ultimate reference resource on cyber security - the Knowledge Trees especially, provide a really useful navigation tool and overview. I use the CyBOK as a primary resource in everything I do."
"I have found the CyBOK to be an invaluable resource in my undergraduate teaching of both Cybersecurity and Computing Science students. I find that the division of the knowledge into the relevant domains makes it easier to locate and get up to speed on modularised course content in a precise manner.. see more
Since its’ introduction, I have used the CyBOK to present the theoretical and research view of my subject areas, which have included Operating Systems, Cryptography and Secure Programming. I find that the structure of the chapters makes it easy to split down the areas of concern to help produce the concepts on which these courses sit."
As we have transitioned to online and blended delivery a resource like this is more important in demonstrating to students the connection between research and the behaviours we see in systems today. As an educator it leverages my restricted preparation time and provides insights and guidance on navigating sometimes tricky work with the assurance that the contributors are experts in their fields. I can whole heartedly recommend this resource to lecturers, researchers and companies that find themselves spending time de-mystifying the concepts underlying cyber behaviours and sharing this knowledge with others. – CU Scarborough."
"I just wanted to say that the research team I support working on the SWAN (Secure Agile Wireless Networks) EPSRC Prosperity Partnership were really impressed by the CyBOK document. We’ve been trying to make sure the team have a good grounding in cyber security as we move through the first phase of the project (we started in February), and the CyBOK document gave us a really excellent overview of the current body of knowledge out there. So thanks to you and your team for that"
"Our team is made up of experts in cyber security, data privacy and human factor security, and we design learning packages for clients that attempt to increase their resilience, by making cyber less technical and more accessible. CyBOK powers our learning resources: it is an exceptional resource that allows us to tie our learning programmes to CyBOK knowledge."