Last dance on the Titanic: Why we need to re-invent computer security

Speaker: Angela Sasse

19th May 2004 , 2pm , Room 519, Claremont Tower

Abstract

Over the past few years, the security researchers and practioners have come to realise that lack of usability can undermine security systems. Most of the recent attempts to address this problem treat usability of security as a user interface (UI) problem. It is no co-incidence that the most widely known and cited paper on usability and security is Whitten & Tygar's "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt", a study of the user interface to PGP 5.0.

Whilst the UIs of many security tools are difficult to use, the talk argues that these immediate user-system interaction problems are only the tip of the "security problem iceberg", and we need to address more fundamental issues. In conclusion, I will argue the case for designing security as a socio-technical system, and outline how the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders ought to be re-defined.

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Biography

M. Angela Sasse is the Professor of Human-Centred Technology in the Department of Computer Science at University College London, UK. She holds an MSc in Psychology from the University of Sheffield, UK, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to joining UCL, she worked as a She has been researching usability issues in security since 1997, and co-authored a more than a dozen publications on human-centred approaches to security, trust and privacy (see http://www.getrealsecurity.com/publications.htm).