Survey and Systematization of Secure Device Pairing

Secure Device Pairing (SDP) schemes have been developed to facilitate secure communications among smart devices, both personal mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Comparison and assessment of SDP schemes is troublesome, because each scheme makes different assumptions about out-of-band channels and adversary models, and are driven by their particular use-cases. A conceptual model that facilitates meaningful comparison among SDP schemes is missing. We provide such a model. In this article, we survey and analyze a wide range of SDP schemes that are described in the literature, including a number that have been adopted as standards. A system model and consistent terminology for SDP schemes are built on the foundation of this survey, which are then used to classify existing SDP schemes into a taxonomy that, for the first time, enables their meaningful comparison and analysis.The existing SDP schemes are analyzed using this model, revealing common systemic security weaknesses among the surveyed SDP schemes that should become priority areas for future SDP research, such as improving the integration of privacy requirements into the design of SDP schemes. Our results allow SDP scheme designers to create schemes that are more easily comparable with one another, and to assist the prevention of persisting the weaknesses common to the current generation of SDP schemes.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, accepted at IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 2017 (Volume: PP, Issue: 99

The patterning of finance/security : a designerly walkthrough of challenger banking apps

Culture is being ‘appified’. Diverse, pre-existing everyday activities are being redesigned so they happen with and through apps. While apps are often encountered as equivalent icons in apps stores or digital devices, the processes of appification – that is, the actions required to turn something into an app – vary significantly. In this article, we offer a comparative analysis of a number of ‘challenger’ banking apps in the United Kingdom. As a retail service, banking is highly regulated and banks must take steps to identify and verify their customers before entering a retail relationship. Once established, this ‘secured’ financial identity underpins a lot of everyday economic activity. Adopting the method of the walkthrough analysis, we study the specific ways these processes of identifying and verifying the identity of the customer (now the user) occur through user onboarding. We argue that banking apps provide a unique way of binding the user to an identity, one that combines the affordances of smart phones with the techniques, knowledge and patterns of user experience design. With the appification of banking, we see new processes of security folded into the everyday experience of apps. Our analysis shows how these binding identities are achieved through what we refer to as the patterning of finance/security. This patterning is significant, moreover, given its availability for wider circulation beyond the context of retail banking apps

Observed demographic differentials in user perceived satisfaction on the usability of mobile banking applications

Mobile banking (m-banking) is a current technological innovation in mobile commerce. The growth of the mobile phone market opens an ever increasing opportunity for the expansion and penetration of the m-banking enterprise with its attendant business gains.However, the context of use of m-banking portends great challenges especially with respect to mobile usability. The peculiarity of the mobile phone (e.g. smallness of screen size, non-traditional input method etc) makes usability difficult and which in turn affects the users’ perceived satisfaction of the m-banking interface, as usability and user satisfaction are associated.Usability is a central issue for mobile phone design, service and evaluation because users need to access various functionalities via limited user interfaces often while they are on the road (on the move).This usability issues in turn affect users’ satisfaction of mobile banking applications. In this study, the perceived satisfaction of users of m-banking applications for three Nigerian banks were assessed and evaluated based on the demographics: age, gender, experience, and education.The study was necessitated due to the dearth of studies on the effects of demographic factors on m-banking usability and satisfaction.An online-based survey approach was used.The results indicate that these factors had significant effect on the perceived satisfaction of m-banking applications. There are significant demographic (age, gender, education, experience) differentials in the user perceived satisfaction on the usability of mobile banking application interfaces

User Interface Challenges of Banking ATM Systems in Nigeria

The use of banking automated teller machine (ATM) technological innovations have significant importance and benefits in Nigeria, but numerous investigations have shown that illiterate and semiliterate Nigerians do not perceive them as useful or easy-to-use. Developing easy-to-use banking ATM system interfaces is essential to accommodate over 40% illiterate and semiliterate Nigerians, who are potential users of banking ATM systems. The purpose of this study was to identify strategies software developers of banking ATM systems in Nigeria use to create easy-to-use banking ATM system interfaces for a variety of people with varying abilities and literacy levels. The technology acceptance model was adopted as the conceptual framework. The study\u27s population consisted of qualified and experienced developers of banking ATM system interfaces chosen from 1 organization in Enugu, Nigeria. The data collection process included semistructured, in-depth face-to-face interviews with 9 banking ATM system interface developers and the analysis of 11 documents: 5 from participant case organizations and 6 from nonparticipant case organizations. Member checking was used to increase the validity of the findings from the participants. Through methodological triangulation, 4 major themes emerged from the study: importance of user-centered design strategies, importance of user feedback as essential interface design, value of pictorial images and voice prompts, and importance of well-defined interface development process. The findings in this study may be beneficial for the future development of strategies to create easy-to-use ATM system interfaces for a variety of people with varying abilities and literacy levels and for other information technology systems that are user interface technology dependent

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

Identifying and Scoping Context-Specific Use Cases For Blockchain-Enabled Systems in the Wild.

Advances in technology often provide a catalyst for digital innovation. Arising from the global banking crisis at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, decentralised and distributed systems have seen a surge in growth and interest. Blockchain technology, the foundation of the decentralised virtual currency Bitcoin, is one such catalyst. The main component of a blockchain, is its public record of verified, timestamped transactions maintained in an append-only, chain-like, data structure. This record is replicated across n-nodes in a network of co-operating participants. This distribution offers a public proof of transactions verified in the past. Beyond tokens and virtual currency, real-world use cases for blockchain technology are in need of research and development. The challenge in this proof-of-concept research is to identify an orchestration model of innovation that leads to the successful development of software artefacts that utilise blockchain technology. These artefacts must maximise the potential of the technology and enhance the real-world business application. An original two phase orchestration model is defined. The model includes both a discovery and implementation phase and implements state-of-the-art process innovation frameworks: Capability Maturity Modelling, Business Process Redesign, Open Innovation and Distributed Digital Innovation. The model succeeds in its aim to generate feasible problem-solution design pairings to be implemented as blockchain enabled software systems. Three systems are developed: an internal supply-chain management system, a crowd-source sponsorship model for individual players on a team and a proof-of-origin smart tag system. The contribution is to have defined an innovation model through which context-specific blockchain usecases can be identified and scoped in the wild

Current Practices for Product Usability Testing in Web and Mobile Applications

Software usability testing is a key methodology that ensures applications are intuitive and easy to use for the target audience. Usability testing has direct benefits for companies as usability improvements often are fundamental to the success of a product. A standard usability test study includes the following five steps: obtain suitable participants, design test scripts, conduct usability sessions, interpret test outcomes, and produce recommendations. Due to the increasing importance for more usable applications, effective techniques to develop usable products, as well as technologies to improve usability testing, have been widely utilized. However, as companies are developing more cross-platform web and mobile apps, traditional single-platform usability testing has shortcomings with respect to ensuring a uniform user experience. In this report, a new strategy is proposed to promote a consistent user experience across all application versions and platforms. This method integrates the testing of different application versions, e.g., the website, mobile app, mobile website. Participants are recruited with a better-defined criterion according to their preferred devices. The usability session is conducted iteratively on several different devices, and the test results of individual application versions are compared on a per-device basis to improve the test outcomes. This strategy is expected to extend on current practices for usability testing by incorporating cross-platform consistency of software versions on most devices