Phishing's Long Tail with Drs. Clay Posey and Matt Canham

In this episode of Cyber Ways, Dr. Clay Posey of Brigham Young University, and Dr. Matthew Canham from the University of Central Florida join us to discuss their 2021 paper, “Phishing for Long Tails: Examining Organizational Repeat Clickers and Protective Stewards,” which was published in SAGE Open. The paper discusses an extensive research project that investigated user responses to phishing attempts. Their results indicate that the majority of phishing attempts clicks come from a minority of users. Also, some users not only never click on phishing attempts, but also tend to report the attempts. Clay and Matt discuss ways that security professionals can think differently about their users and security education, training, and awareness programs to make their organizations’ systems more secure. You can access their paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244021990656

Dr. Posey is an associate professor of information systems at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business. Prior to joining BYU, Dr. Posey was on the faculty of the University of Central Florida. He also served as a faculty member at the University of Alabama, where he was Associate Director of the Cyber Institute. He has published extensively in top journals, including MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Decision Sciences among many others. His research focuses primarily on behavioral aspects of information security and privacy. He is active in numerous professional organizations, including the IFIP Working Group 8.11/11.13 on Information Systems Security Research. We are proud to say that Dr. Posey is a graduate of Louisiana Tech’s doctoral program.

Dr. Canham is currently a research professor of cybersecurity at the University of Central Florida’s Institute of Simulation and Training. His primary research focus is on defending against synthetic media or deepfake remote online social media attacks, human-AI hybrid defense teams, and preventing inference attacks. Prior to joining UCG. Dr. Canham was the program manager of the Emerging Technologies Program for the Operational Technology Division of the Department of Justice at Quantico, VA. He holds a doctorate in cognition, perception, and cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Posey and Dr. Canham are founders of Beyond Layer 7, a consultancy that helps organizations better secure the human layer in organizational cybersecurity. See https://www.belay7.com/index.html for more details.

Intro audio for the Cyber Ways Podcast

Outro audio for Cyber Ways Podcast

Cyber Ways is brought to you by the Center for Information Assurance, which is housed in the College of Business at Louisiana Tech University. The podcast is made possible through a "Just Business Grant," which is funded by the University's generous donors.

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