Tag Archives: Cormac Herley

Microsoft Report Challenges Conventional Wisdom on Cybercrime Losses

It’s a pretty technical read, but this recent Microsoft report, "Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys" by Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley tries to support an interesting hypothesis:  cyber-crime surveys that suggest huge losses from hacking and phishing aren’t reliable.  Here’s an excerpt of their thinking:

First, [cyber-crime] losses are extremely concentrated, so that representative sampling of the population does not give representative sampling of the losses.… More

Is the Rejection of Security Advice by Users Really Rational? A Response to Cormac Herley

In the April 11, 2010, Boston Globe, there is an extended discussion of an article by Cormac Herley of Microsoft entitled, "So Long, And No Thanks for the Externalities:  The Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users."  In his paper, Mr. Herley argues thoughtfully that compliance with even simple security measures, like changing your passwords, is so time-consuming that it is not worth the effort for most users.… More