An Assessment of the Usability of Cybercrime Datasets

Cybersecurity datasets play a vital role in cybersecurity research. Following the identification of potential cybersecurity datasets, researchers access and manipulate data in the selected datasets. This work aims to identify potential usability issues associated with dataset access and data manipulation through a case study of the data sharing process at the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (CCC). We collect survey response from current users of the datasets offered by the CCC, and apply a thematic analysis approach to identify obstacles in the uptake of these datasets, and areas of improvement in the data sharing process. The identified themes suggest that users' level of technological competence, including previous experiences with other datasets, facilitate the uptake of CCC's datasets. Additionally, users' experiences with different stages of the data sharing process, such as dataset usage and its various aspects, including downloading and setting up the dataset, highlight areas of improvement. We conclude that addressing the identified issues would facilitate cybersecurity dataset adoption in the wider research community.