Doha Declaration

Education for Justice

Mind the denominator: towards a more effective measurement system for cybersecurity

Full title in original language:

Mind the denominator: towards a more effective measurement system for cybersecurity

Education level:

University

University (18+ years)

Topic / subtopic:

Cybercrime

Cybercrime prevention

Target audience:

Students, Teachers / Lecturers

Type of resource:

Publication / Article

Languages:

English

Region of relevance:

Global

Access:

restricted access: requiring payment

Individual authors:

Eric Jardine

Publication year:

2018

Published by:

Journal of Cyber Policy / Taylor & Francis

Copyright holder:

Contact name and address:

Taylor & Francis

Contact website:

https://help.tandfonline.com/s/

Key themes:

Links:

Publication

Short description:

Crime statistics in the physical world are routinely normalised around the population of a city or country. Such normalisations are essential, as they provide both a propensity-based perspective on crime (e.g. the odds of being murdered are 1 in 100,000) and correct for the simple fact that a larger population should have more crimes. Unfortunately, many cybersecurity metrics tend to be uncorrected counts of malicious phenomena such as the number of phishing websites. While normalisation cannot make bad measures good, a failure to normalise even the best cybersecurity metrics can lead to bias. A failure to normalise count statistics around the size of the ecosystem, sensor density or risk mitigation personnel has implications for the observed trends, often making the state of cybersecurity seem worse than it actually is. In short, normalisation of malicious count data is a crucial measurement step and has significant impacts for both firm- and economy-wide risk management strategies and policy assessment.

Short description:

Crime statistics in the physical world are routinely normalised around the population of a city or country. Such normalisations are essential, as they provide both a propensity-based perspective on crime (e.g. the odds of being murdered are 1 in 100,000) and correct for the simple fact that a larger population should have more crimes. Unfortunately, many cybersecurity metrics tend to be uncorrected counts of malicious phenomena such as the number of phishing websites. While normalisation cannot make bad measures good, a failure to normalise even the best cybersecurity metrics can lead to bias. A failure to normalise count statistics around the size of the ecosystem, sensor density or risk mitigation personnel has implications for the observed trends, often making the state of cybersecurity seem worse than it actually is. In short, normalisation of malicious count data is a crucial measurement step and has significant impacts for both firm- and economy-wide risk management strategies and policy assessment.

Doha Declaration

Education for Justice

Supported by the State of Qatar

60 years Crime Congress