Title: Characterising File Sharing and its Protection, the Insider Threat Case

Issue Number: Vol. 4, No. 2
Year of Publication: Jan - 2015
Page Numbers: 354-379
Authors: Rakan Alsowail, Ian Mackie
Journal Name: International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics (IJCSDF)
- Hong Kong
DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.17781/P001553

Abstract:


File sharing has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Some of the shared files are sensitive, thus, their confidentially, integrity and availability should be protected. This paper investigates the protection requirements and the activities of file sharing from the perspective of the insider threat problem. It addresses three fundamental questions to the design of a protection mechanism against insider misuses: who is the insider, what are the insider misuses, and how the activity of file sharing can be performed. This paper proposes a new approach for classifying the insider threat problem into different categories and then focuses on one category that is related to file sharing. It characterises the protection required by the shared files against different types of insiders misuses and characterises the activity file sharing based on two factors: how files can be propagated and how they can be accessed after their propagation.