Assessing the usability of end-user security software

Authors:
Tarik Ibrahim;Steven M. Furnell;Maria Papadaki;Nathan L. Clarke
Affiliations:
Centre for Security, Communications & Network Research, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom and Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt;Centre for Security, Communications & Network Research, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom and School of Computer and Security Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Aus ...;Centre for Security, Communications & Network Research, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom;Centre for Security, Communications & Network Research, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom and School of Computer and Security Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Aus ...
Venue:
TrustBus'10 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Trust, privacy and security in digital business
Year:
2010

Citing 3
Cited 0

Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristics

CHI '94 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Towards a taxonomy of network scanning techniques

Proceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology
A dynamic fusion approach for security situation assessment

CNIS '07 Proceedings of the Fourth IASTED International Conference on Communication, Network and Information Security

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

From a previous study we have determined that commercial security products can suffer from a usability perspective, lacking the necessary attention to design in relation to their alert interfaces. The aim of the paper is to assess the usability of alerts in some of the leading Internet security packages, based upon a related set of usability criteria. The findings reveal that the interface design combined with the user's relative lack of security knowledge are two major challenges that influence their decision making process. The analysis of the alert designs showed that four of the criteria are not addressed in any of the selected security measures and it would be desirable to consider the user's previous decisions on similar alerts, and modify alerts according to the user's previous behaviour.