Usable Security

Many thanks to Lorrie Cranor for organizing this badly needed conference.  Lorrie started off the day with some motivation by noting the growing severity of security problems.  After you’ve followed all of the common advice and installed virus scanners, firewall software, a pop-up blocker, a cookie management tool, spam filters, and maybe some encryption software, do you have any time left to actually use your computer?

On a related note, a link at Google News brought my attention to a recently released research study by the Pew Internet Project on public awareness of security problems on the Internet.  It’s worth checking out.  Awareness is high: 91% of the surveyed Internet users reported that they had changed their online behaviour to avoid unwanted software programs.  But after hearing descriptions of spyware and adware, 43% of users say they have had spyware or adware on their computers.

Congratulations to Giovanni Iachello, Ian Smith, Sunny Consolvo, Mike Chen, and Gregory Abowd on receiving the award for Best Paper!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7, 2005 at 05:28 under General. You can leave a comment here or trackback from your own site. Use the comment feed to follow comments on this entry.