Service Security and Privacy as a Socio-Technical Problem: Literature review, analysis methodology and challenge domains

Published online September 2015 accepted: 15 September 2014Published online September 2015 accepted: 15 September 2014The security and privacy of the data that users transmit, more or less deliberately, to modern services is an open problem. It is not solely limited to the actual Internet traversal, a sub-problem vastly tackled by consolidated research in security protocol design and analysis. By contrast, it entails much broader dimensions pertaining to how users approach technology and understand the risks for the data they enter. For example, users may express cautious or distracted personas depending on the service and the point in time; further, pre-established paths of practice may lead them to neglect the intrusive privacy policy offered by a service, or the outdated protections adopted by another. The approach that sees the service security and privacy problem as a socio-technical one needs consolidation. With this motivation, the article makes a threefold contribution. It reviews the existing literature on service security and privacy, especially from the socio-technical standpoint. Further, it outlines a general research methodology aimed at layering the problem appropriately, at suggesting how to position existing findings, and ultimately at indicating where a transdisciplinary task force may fit in. The article concludes with the description of the three challenge domains of services whose security and privacy we deem open socio-technical problems, not only due to their inherent facets but also to their huge number of users

Análise da Gestão de Palavras-Chave

Gradualmente, tem-se vindo a verificar que a informação pertencente aos diversos utilizadores da Internet está cada vez mais exposta a ataques. Estas invasões comprometem os seus dados, e, para isso, têm surgido algumas respostas, tais como a segurança da informação. Um dos fatores que se destaca e que está relacionado com esta é a autenticidade. Técnicas de biometria e chaves eletrónicas são exemplos usados para a assegurar, na informação. Porém, o mecanismo que mais sobressai é a utilização de um par constituído por nome de utilizador e palavra-chave. Contudo, este tem revelado alguns problemas associados. Ora, se é usado um único segredo para salvaguardar todos os recursos privados, e este é descoberto, a informação do utilizador estará inteiramente comprometida. Já no caso de serem empregues múltiplas passwords, corre-se o risco de haver o esquecimento das credenciais de acesso. Por outro lado, existem inconvenientes se estas são curtas (facilmente encontradas) ou longas (difíceis de memorizar). Dadas as situações relatadas, têm vindo a ser aplicados gestores de palavras-chave. Tais métodos permitem o armazenamento dos segredos, bem como a sua criação, podendo estes ter vários tipos de resoluções, variando entre técnicas locais, móveis, ou até mesmo baseadas na web. Todas elas possuem vantagens (dependendo do cenário), assim como desvantagens comuns. De forma a verificar se estas ferramentas disponibilizam a segurança prometida, foi executada uma análise intensiva a alguns programas, escolhidos pelo seu desempenho e notoriedade, que já se encontram no mercado. Caso não se mostrassem eficazes, seria proposta uma aplicação, com vista a resolver os problemas descobertos. Porém, concluiu-se que já existe um mecanismo que oferece a salvaguarda pretendida. Assim, foi feito unicamente um estudo sobre as abordagens que podem ser adotadas, destacando a que se apresentou como mais adequada.It has been verified, gradually, that information belonging to different Internet users, is increasingly exposed to attacks. These invasions compromise their data, and so, some answers have arisen, such as information security. One of the most important factors, related to this concept, is authenticity. Biometrics and security tokens are examples used to ensure it. However, the mechanism that stands out more, is the pair composed by a username and password. Nevertheless, this has revealed some problems. If a single secret is used to protect all the websites, and it’s discovered, users’ information will be fully compromised. If there are used multiple passwords, there may be a risk of forgetting access credentials. On the other hand, there are drawbacks if they are short (easily found) or long (hard to remember). Considering the reported statements, password managers have been applied. Such methods allow to store and generate passwords, and can have different types of solutions, ranging between local, mobile or even web-based. All of these have advantages (depending on the scenario), as well as common disadvantages. In order to check if these tools offer the promised security, it was performed an intensive analysis to some programs, chosen by their performance and reputation, that are already on the market. If they proved to be ineffective, an application to solve the discovered problems would be proposed. However, it was concluded that a mechanism providing the desired protection, already exists. Thereby, it was only conducted a study about the approaches that can be adopted, pointing out the one that was presented as more appropriate