Four years of usable security research at SOUPS
By sylvie | June 22, 2010
With the change in my research area, I have also changed my annual conference. I usually attend CSCW, but this year I will be attending the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2010), which will be held in Redmond next month.
One of the hardest things to do when you start doing research in a new area is figuring out what you should be working on. You need to find out (a) what people have been working on; (b) what the hot topics are at the moment; (c) what the future hot topics will probably be; and (d) what kind of work you can do, preferably from column (c). There are only two ways to do this: talk with other people who are working in the area and read what’s been published in the area.
Because I know practically nothing about usable security, I’ve decided to start off gently, by skimming all of the research papers that have been published at SOUPS from 2005 to 2009. This gives me an idea of the type of work that’s being done without having to read all of it.
The following is a first draft of the themes covered in the papers and posters presented at SOUPS from 2005 to 2009, so there may be some errors in how I’ve regrouped items and in how I’ve classified papers, but it should give you an idea of what people have been working on in the usable security area: SOUPS Research Categories (PDF file)
One thing that surprised me was the almost total absence of work on biometrics. Maybe there isn’t much you can do there, usability-wise? I don’t know. On the other hand, there is a lot of work going on in access control (who can read what where), in authentication (how to improve passwords and challenge questions), in privacy and website privacy policies, and in security (not surprisingly, since it’s a symposium on privacy and security).
As I said, it’s a first draft, so feel free to comment.
Topics: usability, Conference, Security, Trust, SOUPS |
