HCI SECURITY

HCI Security

HCI Security

Importance of HCI Security

The intersection of human computer interaction (HCI), privacy and security is emerging as a critical area for research amid the backdrop of recent world events. Information is being improperly disclosed in ways that causes real harm to people through identity theft. Organizations are concerned about theft of proprietary data and documents. Citizens are becoming increasingly concerned about the use of the vast amounts of data that organizations and governments have about them. The rapid advancement of the use of information technology in industry, government and academia makes it much easier to collect, transfer and store sensitive information of a variety of types around the world. We are faced with technical challenges that result from inadequate consideration of security and privacy issues in architecting our information systems. And while there certainly is considerable research in this area, particularly on the security side, it is becoming increasingly clear that really making our systems secure and enabling appropriate attention to privacy issues will require more than just a technology focus. Recently, usability has been identified as a major challenge to moving the results of security and privacy research into use in real systems. (Blais 2006 33)

It is a fact that women are more susceptible than men to phishing. Privacy of information held in information systems depends on security the ability to protect a system's resources from harmful attack or unauthorized access (http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/pap1162-sheng.pdf). Security is an essential component in systems that house personal information on employees, clients, constituents, students, customers and patients. The role of security goes well beyond the protection of personal information. It includes, for example, corporate and national security information about trade secrets, business practices, payrolls, research and development, strategy and logistics plans, fuel preserves and similar things that could wreak havoc if placed in the wrong hands (e.g., by industrial competitors who wish to obtain unfair advantage, or terrorists who wish to bring harm to business or government entities, bring down power grids, or destabilize banking and financial systems around the world). (Preacher 2008 879)

Lack Of Research In Gender HCI-Sec

The security functionality in these systems must be usable for the people in the range of user roles with different perspectives and skills who interact with it. If the security aspects of a system are so complex that individuals within the various user roles (e.g., technical users, business users and end-users) cannot understand it, then costly errors will occur. In the HCI field there is a saying that “If the user cannot understand the functionality, it doesn't exist”. In security the problem may even be worse than the functionality not existing because the organization may think data is secured when it is not. Deciding how we can design usable and effective privacy and security technology capabilities for the future includes philosophical, legal, cultural, business, social policy, human performance and practical dimensions. Since at its core the goals of HCI and user-centered design are to understand the user, the user's tasks or goals and the social and ...