STAST STAST 2014 - WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS: EDITOR'S PREFACE

It is now a consolidated understanding that security and trust are socio-technical properties. Security is achievable not only by strengthening the protocols that a system runs but also by harmonising how the system interfaces its users. Security depends upon the way people evaluate risks and take decisions while they interact with the system. Hence security depends also on cognitive, social, and educational factors, as does trust. This more comprehensive perspective is getting known as socio-technical security.  The research about it is inherently multi-faceted, since taking a socio-technical approach to security and trust reveals insights that escape a purely technical analysis. For instance, there are vulnerabilities in the social layers of information systems when people are influenced to behave in a certain way because of social pressure. There are vulnerabilities in a system's interacting and interfacing with users and with the environment, and in the context and the physical spaces where a system operates. Besides, even security measures, despite technically correct, may fail to be usable, and even inspire a sense of distrust.  

Researchers from different disciplines, such as sociology, psychology and informatics, should then construct a holistic vision of security and trust. The workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security and Trust (STAST) was conceived with that mission in mind. It was borne to foster an interdisciplinary discussion on how to model and analyse the security aspects of modern socio-technical systems and on how to protect such systems from threats and attacks of socio-technical nature. STAST should bring together experts in computer security and in cognitive, social, and behavioural sciences to collect the state of the art, identify open and emerging problems, and propose future research directions.

STAST 2011, the 1st edition, took place at the University of Milano (Milan, Italy), hosted by the International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS).  STAST 2012, the 2nd edition, was held at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, US) and 3rd edition, STAST 2013 at the Tulane University (New Orleans, LA, US), both editions hosted by the Computer Security Foundation Symposium (CSF).  This year, STAST reaches its 4th edition, once more as a workshop of the CSF in the Vienna Summer of Logic (VSL). This volume gathers the workshop's pre-proceedings, composed by seven works carefully selected out of the forteen submitted by means of internal debate following at least three reviews by members of the programme committee.  

The STAST organizers and programme chair wish to thank the authors for their contribution to the success of the workshop, the programme committee members for their excellent work, and the organizers of the CSF and VSL for their valuable support.