Masterarbeit im Studiengang Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnk von Ignacio Collado: Cyber Situational Awareness for Computer Emergency Response Teams: Design and Evaluation of an Automated Alerting and Sharing System

Abstract: Computer emergency response teams (CERTs) of the public sector provide advisory, preventive, and reactive cybersecurity services for authorities, citizens, and enterprises. However, their tasks of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating threats to establish cyber situational awareness are getting more complex due to the increasing information volume disseminated through public channels. Besides the time-consuming data collection for incident handling and daily reporting, CERTs are often confronted with irrelevant, redundant, or incredible information, exacerbating the time-critical prevention of and response to cyber threats. This thesis presents the design of an alerting and sharing component of the Cyber Threat Observatory, which is an automatic, cross-platform and real-time cybersecurity dashboard. Based on semi-structured interviews (N=8), one design iteration and scenario-based evaluation sessions (N=6) with CERT-EU and EC employees from Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, and Spain, it discusses design implications around automatization and alert detection, personalization and customizability, data export and refinement, as well as data source integration.

Betreuer*in: Dr. Tobias Meuser, Dr. Marc-André Kaufhold

Prüfer: Prof. Dr. Ralf Steinmetz, Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter