P.K. SHARMA

Cyber security intelligence, AI governance, practitioner analysis

People and organisations

Person (user): what it is and how it is attacked

A named individual involved in the diagram.

Also known as

  • user
  • employee
  • staff member

Typing any of them into the editor finds this object.

Why it matters on a security diagram

A person doing something reasonable in an unreasonable situation is a recurring shape in incidents, which is why the person belongs on the diagram. Label the role rather than the individual unless there is a reason not to.

How it gets attacked, and what reduces it

How it gets attacked

  • Convincing messages that create urgency
  • Phone calls impersonating IT support

What reduces it

  • Make reporting a suspicious approach easy and blameless, because that is the only control that reaches this
  • Verify unusual requests through a second channel the requester did not choose

Where it sits

Group
People and organisations · The humans and the entities they belong to.
Whose side, by default
Ours · Belongs to the organisation the diagram is about.
Catalogue identifier
person

Reviewed . CC BY 4.0.

Others in people and organisations

The people and organisations group carries every object in it, including the ones with no page of their own.

Person on your own diagram

Open the editor, press N, and type user. The object is placed and connected to whatever was selected, and Tab adds the next one already joined to it. Nothing is uploaded: the page is served with a Content Security Policy that forbids the browser from making any outbound request at all.

Open the diagram maker