Adam Jenkins’s research while affiliated with King's College London and other places

System administrators, similar to end users, may delay or avoid software patches, also known as updates, despite the impact their timely application can have on system security. These admins are responsible for large, complex, amalgamated systems and must balance the security related needs of their organizations, which would benefit from the patch, with the need to ensure that systems must continue to run unimpeded. In this paper, we present a case study which follows the online life-cycle of a pair of Microsoft patches. We find that communities of sysadmins have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to perform risk assessments that are centred around collecting, synthesizing, and generating information on patches. These communities span different Virtual Communities of Practice, as well as influencers who monitor and report on the impact of new patches. As information is propagated and aggregated across blogs, forums, web sites, and mailing lists, eventually resulting in a consensus around the risk of a patch. Our findings highlight the role that these communities play in informing risk management decisions: Patch information is not static, and it transforms as communities collaborate to understand patch issues.

Malicious communications aimed at tricking employees are a serious threat for organizations, necessitating the creation of procedures and policies for quickly respond to ongoing attacks. While automated measures provide some protection, they cannot completely protect an organization. In this case study, we use interviews and observations to explore the processes staff at a large University use when handling reports of malicious communication, including how the help desk processes reports, whom they escalate them to, and how teams who manage protections such as the firewalls and mail relays use these reports to improve defenses. We found that the process and work patterns are a distributed cognitive process requiring multiple distinct teams with narrow system access and tactic knowledge. Sudden large campaigns were found to overwhelm the help desk with reports, greatly impacting staff's workflow and hindering the effective application of mitigations and the potential for reflection. We detail potential improvements to ticketing systems and reflect on ITIL, a common framework of best practice in IT management.

The security attitudes and approaches of software developers have a large impact on the software they produce, yet we know very little about how and when these views are constructed. This paper investigates the security and privacy (S&P) perceptions, experiences, and practices of current Computer Science students at the graduate and undergraduate level using semi-structured interviews. We find that the attitudes of students already match many of those that have been observed in professional level developers. Students have a range of hacker and attack mindsets, lack of experience with security APIs, a mixed view of who is in charge of S&P in the software life cycle, and a tendency to trust other peoples’ code as a convenient approach to rapidly build software. We discuss the impact of our results on both curriculum development and support for professional developers.

The security attitudes and approaches of software developers have a large impact on the software they produce, yet we know very little about how and when these views are constructed. This paper investigates the security and privacy (S&P) perceptions, experiences, and practices of current Computer Science students at the graduate and undergraduate level using semi-structured interviews. We find that the attitudes of students already match many of those that have been observed in professional level developers. Students have a range of hacker and attack mindsets, lack of experience with security APIs, a mixed view of who is in charge of S&P in the software life cycle, and a tendency to trust other peoples' code as a convenient approach to rapidly build software. We discuss the impact of our results on both curriculum development and support for professional developers.

Applying regular patches is vital for the timely correction of security vulnerabilities, but installing patches also risks disrupting working systems by potentially introducing unknown errors. System administrators must manage the challenges of patching using a combination of reliance on best practice and available information to best match their organizations' needs. In this work, we study how patch-related activities are supported by the mailing list of the website PatchManagement.org which is dedicated to the task. We qualitatively coded 356 list emails sent between March and July, 2018, to understand how members interact with the list community. Based on our results, we argue that the mailing list is an example of an Online Community of Practice, where practitioners engage in communal learning and support. We find that the community supports members in multiple phases of the patching process by providing workarounds before a patch is available, guidance prioritizing released patches, and helping with post-patch trouble. Additionally, the community provides help around tool selection and facilitating discussions.

The security attitudes and approaches of software developers have a large impact on the software they produce, yet we know very little about how and when these views are constructed. This paper investigates the security and privacy (S&P) perceptions, experiences, and practices of current Computer Science students at the graduate and undergraduate level using semi-structured interviews. We find that the attitudes of students already match many of those that have been observed in professional level developers. Students have a range of hacker and attack mindsets, lack of experience with security APIs, a mixed view of who is in charge of S&P in the software life cycle, and a tendency to trust other peoples' code as a convenient approach to rapidly build software. We discuss the impact of our results on both curriculum development and support for professional developers.