Security when people matter: structuring incentives for user behavior

  • Authors:
  • Rick Wash;Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI;University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Electronic commerce
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Humans are "smart components" in a system, but cannot be directly programmed to perform; rather, their autonomy must be respected as a design constraint and incentives provided to induce desired behavior. Sometimes these incentives are properly aligned, and the humans don't represent a vulnerability. But often, a misalignment of incentives causes a weakness in the system that can be exploited by clever attackers. Incentive-centered design tools help us understand these problems, and provide design principles to alleviate them. We describe incentive-centered design and some tools it provides. We provide a number of examples of security problems for which Incentive Centered Design might be helpful. We elaborate with a general screening model that offers strong design principles for a class of security problems.