Maritime systems, including ships and ports, are critical components of global infrastructure, essential for transporting over 80% of the world's goods and supporting internet connectivity. However, these systems face growing cybersecurity threats, as shown by recent attacks disrupting Maersk, one of the world's largest shipping companies, causing widespread impacts on international trade. The unique challenges of the maritime environment--such as diverse operational conditions, extensive physical access points, fragmented regulatory frameworks, and its deeply interconnected structure--require maritime-specific cybersecurity research. Despite the sector's importance, maritime cybersecurity remains underexplored, leaving significant gaps in understanding its challenges and risks. To address these gaps, we investigate how maritime system operators perceive and navigate cybersecurity challenges within this complex landscape. We conducted a user study comprising surveys and semi-structured interviews with 21 officer-level mariners. Participants reported direct experiences with shipboard cyber-attacks, including GPS spoofing and logistics-disrupting ransomware, demonstrating the real-world impact of these threats. Our findings reveal systemic and human-centric issues, such as training poorly aligned with maritime needs, insufficient detection and response tools, and serious gaps in mariners' cybersecurity understanding. Our contributions include a categorization of threats identified by mariners and recommendations for improving maritime security, including better training, response protocols, and regulation. These insights aim to guide future research and policy to strengthen the resilience of maritime systems.

Malware analysis aims to understand how malicious software carries out actions necessary for a successful attack and identify the possible impacts of the attack. While there has been substantial research focused on malware analysis and it is an important tool for practitioners in industry, the overall malware analysis process used by practitioners has not been studied. As a result, an understanding of common malware analysis workflows and their goals is lacking. A better understanding of these workflows could help identify new research directions that are impactful in practice. In order to better understand malware analysis processes, we present the results of a user study with 21 professional malware analysts with diverse backgrounds who work at 18 different companies. The study focuses on answering three research questions: (1) What are the different objectives of malware analysts in practice?, (2) What comprises a typical professional malware analyst workflow, and (3) When analysts decide to conduct dynamic analysis, what factors do they consider when setting up a dynamic analysis system? Based on participant responses, we propose a taxonomy of malware analysts and identify five common analysis workflows. We also identify challenges that analysts face during the different stages of their workflow. From the results of the study, we propose two potential directions for future research, informed by challenges described by the participants. Finally, we recommend guidelines for developers of malware analysis tools to consider in order to improve the usability of such tools.