20,807 research outputs found

    Understanding user behavior towards passwords through acceptance and use modelling

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    The security of computer systems that store our data is a major issue facing the world. This research project investigated the roles of ease of use, facilitating conditions, intention to use passwords securely, experience and age on usage of passwords, using a model based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of technology. Data was collected via an online survey of computer users, and analyzed using PLS. The results show there is a significant relationship between ease of use of passwords, intention to use them securely and the secure usage of passwords. Despite expectations, facilitating conditions only had a weak impact on intention to use passwords securely and did not influence actual secure usage. Computing experience was found to have an effect on intention to use passwords securely, but age did not. The results of this research lend themselves to assisting in policy design and better understanding user behavior

    Users are not the enemy

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    Many system security departments treat users as a security risk to be controlled. The general consensus is that most users are careless and unmotivated when it comes to system security. In a recent study, we found that users may indeed compromise computer security mechanisms, such as password authentication, both knowing and unknowingly. A closer analysis, however, revealed that such behavior is often caused by the way in which security mechanisms are implemented, and users ’ lack of knowledge. We argue that to change this state of affairs, security departments need to communicate more with users, and adopt a user-centered design approach

    Usable Security: Why Do We Need It? How Do We Get It?

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    Security experts frequently refer to people as “the weakest link in the chain” of system security. Famed hacker Kevin Mitnick revealed that he hardly ever cracked a password, because it “was easier to dupe people into revealing it” by employing a range of social engineering techniques. Often, such failures are attributed to users’ carelessness and ignorance. However, more enlightened researchers have pointed out that current security tools are simply too complex for many users, and they have made efforts to improve user interfaces to security tools. In this chapter, we aim to broaden the current perspective, focusing on the usability of security tools (or products) and the process of designing secure systems for the real-world context (the panorama) in which they have to operate. Here we demonstrate how current human factors knowledge and user-centered design principles can help security designers produce security solutions that are effective in practice
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