Bringing Shadow Information Protection Practices into the Light

Professor Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Royal Holloway, University of London

The Cyber Security Cartographies (CySeCa) project was one of four projects that have formed the first phase of the UK’s Research Institute for the Science of Cyber Security (RISCS). The focus of RISCS is to conduct and support research related to the selection and measurement of security measures. CySeCa specialised in the development of creative security techniques, including storytelling, to uncover a fuller picture of real-world information production, sharing and protection practices. During 2015 field trials of these techniques were carried out at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). As part of these field trials, the roles of workarounds in managing the risks to information were uncovered. The research showed that people are often put into the impossible position of having to choose between complying with security policy and getting the job done. In the workplace, these tensions are currently going largely unnoticed, unacknowledged and unsupported but by making these workaround practices visible, both the risks and the benefits related to them can be assessed. DWP went on to make a video about this work and the impact that it has had on security practice. In this talk, a snapshot of the techniques and their impacts together with the main study narratives will be presented.

Professor Lizzie Coles-Kemp is a qualitative researcher, interested in the everyday practices of information sharing and protection. Her work seeks to shed light on shadow, informal practices of information sharing and protection and to identify the underlying mechanisms of effective information protection. She worked as an Information Security Manager and then Lead Assessor for security management standards for 18 years before taking up an academic career. She is now a Professor in Information Security at Royal Holloway University of London and leads a creative security research practice within the university’s Information Security Group. Her main focus is the interaction between people and security and privacy technologies, how each influences the other and the communities of practice that emerge. Lizzie is deputy director of the UK's Research Institute for the Science of Cyber Security (RISCS). RISCS is sponsored by GCHQ and the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and holds a five year EPSRC research fellowship examining the intersection between human and digital security.

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