Designing Secure Interfaces for Dummies

Architecture and Background

Nick Farr - Designing Secure Interfaces "for Dummies" "The old addage holds there is an inverse relationship between usability and security. The more user-friendly the system, the less secure it is.

Vulnerability Analysis

However, recent user heuristics research may lend insight into how to design more usable, more secure operating system interfaces--independent of the underlying OS architecture, AND the gullibility of the user. By highlighting the graphical and subtexual cues recently highlighted in popular OS interfaces, the speech will cover how users are betrayed by them, either into a state of paranoia or a false sense of security.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

The speech will show how both states can be used to exploit the system through the user. As well, five guidelines for future interface design will be presented, showing how increasing the security of the interface can actually be used to increase, instead of restrict usability.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

While the talk is theoretical, each guidline will be applied as integrated into the design of a work-in-progress Kiosk package currently under development." Nick recently graduated from the U of Michigan with a degree in Social Science, which included some graduate work at the School of Information in Human Computer Interaction. He works as a developer for the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.