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Scientific homepage of Wolter Pieters

The TRESPASS project: socio-technical attack navigators




(Free but not-so-secure energy: Námaskarđ/Hverarönd geothermal field, Mývatn area, Iceland)



Assistant professor cyber riskTRESPASS project technical leader
Section ICTServices, Cybersecurity and Safety group
Faculty of Technology, Policy and ManagementFaculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Delft University of TechnologyUniversity of Twente
phone: +31 15 27 88989
e-mail: [initial] dot [lastname] at [universitydomain] dot nl

My research focuses on cyber security risk management in complex systems. I work with qualitative and quantitative socio-technical security models, attack models, and attack graphs, to discover and prioritise weaknesses, and evaluate countermeasures. In relation to such decision support, I am also interested in the ethics of cyber security. I address electronic voting, cloud computing and electricity infrastructures as cases.

My research is part of the TRESPASS project.

News

June 2014The paper "Cyber security as social experiment", joint work with Dina Hadziosmanovic and Francien Dechesne, has been accepted for New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW) 2014.
May 13, 2014Papers now available online:
Reconciling malicious and accidental risk in cyber security.
Cost-Effectiveness of Security Measures: A Model-Based Framework.
Quantitative penetration testing with item response theory. (technical report, forthcoming in IAS 2013)
Defining "the weakest link": Comparative security in complex systems of systems.
Obligations to enforce prohibitions: on the adequacy of security policies.
April 12, 2014I was program co-chair of the GraMSec workshop on graphical security models, April 12 in Grenoble, France. We had very interesting papers, keynote lecture and discussion!

Upcoming events

July 18, 2014I am a program committee member of the 4th Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security and Trust (STAST).
September 15-18, 2014I will present the paper "Cyber security as social experiment", joint work with Dina Hadziosmanovic and Francien Dechesne, at New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW) 2014.
November 30-December 5, 2014
I'm an organizer of the Dagstuhl seminar on Socio-Technical Security Metrics, with Dieter Gollmann, M. Eric Johnson, Vincent Koenig and Angela Sasse. The seminar is invitation-only, but expressions of interest are welcome (no guarantees).

Older news

Selected recent publications

Cloud security

Pieters, W. (2013) Defining "The Weakest Link": Comparative Security in Complex Systems of Systems. In: 2013 IEEE 5th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science, 2-5 Dec 2013, Bristol, United Kingdom. pp. 39-44. IEEE Computer Society. ISBN 978-0-7695-5095-4
Probst, C.W. and Sasse, A.M. and Pieters, W. and Dimkov, T. and Luysterborg, E. and Arnaud, M. (2012) Privacy penetration testing -- how to establish trust in your cloud provider. In: European Data Protection: In Good Health? International, Foreign and Comparative Law XVIII. Springer, London, pp. 251-266. ISBN 978-94-007-2902-5
Pieters, W. (2011) Security and privacy in the clouds: a bird's eye view. In: Computers, Privacy and Data Protection: an Element of Choice. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 445-457. ISBN 978-94-007-0640-8
van Cleeff, A. and Pieters, W. and Wieringa, R.J. (2009) Security Implications of Virtualization: A Literature Study. In: 2009 IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE09), volume 3, 29 Aug - 31 Aug, Vancouver, BC, Canada. pp. 353-358. IEEE Computer Society. ISBN 978-0-7695-3823-5
Pieters, W. and Tang, Q. (2009) Data is key: introducing the data-based access control paradigm. In: Data and Applications Security 2009, 12-15 Jul 2009, Montreal, Canada. pp. 240-251. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5645. Springer Verlag. ISBN 978-3-642-03006-2

Security in electronic voting

van Cleeff, A. and Dimkov, T. and Pieters, W. and Wieringa, R.J. (2011) Realizing Security Requirements with Physical Properties: A Case Study on Paper Voting. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on IT Convergence and Security (ICITCS 2011), December 14 -16, 2011, Suwon, South Korea. pp. 51-67. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 120. Springer Verlag. ISSN 1876-1100 ISBN 978-94-007-2910-0 *** best paper award ***
Jonker, H.L. and Pieters, W. (2010) Anonymity in voting revisited. In: Towards Trustworthy Elections: New Directions in Electronic Voting. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6000. Springer Verlag, Berlin, pp. 216-230. ISBN 978-3-642-12979-7
Langer, L. and Jonker, H.L. and Pieters, W. (2010) Anonymity and Verifiability in Voting: Understanding (Un)Linkability. In: 12th International Conference Information and Communications Security, ICICS 2010, 15-17 Dec 2010, Barcelona, Spain. pp. 296-310. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6476. Springer Verlag. ISSN 0302-9743 ISBN 978-3-642-17649-4
Pieters, W. (2010) Verifiability of electronic voting: between confidence and trust. In: Data Protection in a Profiled World. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 157-175. ISBN 978-90-481-8864-2
Pieters, W. (2009) Combatting electoral traces: the Dutch tempest discussion and beyond. In: E-Voting and Identity: Second International Conference, VOTE-ID 2009, 7-8 Sep 2009, Luxembourg city, Luxembourg. pp. 172-190. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5767. Springer Verlag. ISSN 0302-9743 ISBN 978-3-642-04134-1

Socio-technical security

Pieters, W. and Lukszo, Z. and Hadziosmanovic, D. and Van den Berg, J. (2014) Reconciling malicious and accidental risk in cyber security. Journal of Internet Services and Information Security, 4 (2). pp. 2-26. ISSN 2182-2069
Pieters, W. and Probst, C.W. and Lukszo, S. and Montoya Morales, A.L. (2014) Cost-effectiveness of Security Measures: A model-based Framework. In: Approaches and Processes for Managing the Economics of Information Systems. IGI Global, Hershey, PA, USA, pp. 139-156. ISBN 978-1-4666-4983-5
Pieters, W. and Dimkov, T. and Pavlovic, D. (2013) Security policy alignment: A formal approach. IEEE Systems Journal. ISSN 1932-8184
Pieters, W. and Van der Ven, S.H.G. and Probst, C.W. (2012) A move in the security measurement stalemate: Elo-style ratings to quantify vulnerability. In: NSPW '12: Proceedings of the 2012 New security paradigms workshop, 18-21 Sep 2012, Bertinoro, Italy. pp. 1-14 ACM. 978-1-4503-1794-8
Pieters, W. and Coles-Kemp, L. (2011) Reducing normative conflicts in information security. In: NSPW '11: Proceedings of the 2011 New security paradigms workshop, 12-15 Sep 2011, Marin County, CA. pp. 11-24. ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-1078-9

Security ethics

Pieters, W. (2013) On thinging things and serving services: technological mediation and inseparable goods. Ethics and information technology, 15 (3). pp. 195-208. ISSN 1388-1957 *** ISI Impact 0,85 ***
Pieters, W. (2011) The (social) construction of information security. The Information Society, 27 (5). pp. 326-335. ISSN 0197-2243 *** ISI Impact 1,111 ***
Pieters, W. (2011) How devices transform voting. In: Innovating Government. Normative, policy and technological dimensions of modern government. Information Technology and Law Series 20. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, pp. 439-452. ISSN 1570-2782 ISBN 978-90-6704-730-2
Pieters, W. (2010) Reve{a,i}ling the risks: a phenomenology of information security Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 14 (3). pp. 176-188. ISSN 1091-8264
Pieters, W. and van Cleeff, A. (2009) The Precautionary Principle in a World of Digital Dependencies. IEEE Computer, 42 (6). pp. 50-56. ISSN 0018-9162 *** ISI Impact 2,205 ***

All publications