Strategies for Secure Interaction Design: authority, guidelines for interface design

Strategies for Secure Interaction Design: authority, guidelines for interface design

• It’s the user who is making security decision, so, keep user in mind when designing security systems.

Authority Guidelines

• Match the easiest way to do a task with the least granting of authority.
  • What are typical user tasks?
  • What is the easiest way for the user to accomplish each task?
  • What authority is granted to software and other people when the user takes the easiest route to completing the task?
  • How can the safest ways of accomplishing the task be made easier and vice versa?
• Grant authority to others in accordance with user actions indicating consent.
  • When does the system give access to the user’s resources?
  • What user action grants that access?
  • Does the user understand that the action grants access?
• Offer the user ways to reduce other’s authority to access the user’s resources.
  • What kind of access does the user grant to software and other users?
  • Which types of access can be revoked?
  • How can the interface help the user find and revoke access?

Authorization and Communication Guidelines

• Users should know what authority other’s have.
  • What kind of authority can software and other users hold?
  • What kind of authority impact user decisions with security consequences?
  • How can the interface provide timely access to information about these authorities?
• User should know what authority they themselves have.
  • What kind of authority does the user hold?
  • How does the user know they have that authority?
  • What might the user decide based on their expectation of authority?
• Make sure the user trust the software acting on their behalf.
  • What agents manipulate authority on the user’s behalf?
  • How can users be sure they are communicating with the intended agent?
  • How might the agent be impersonated?
  • How might the user’s communication with the agent be corrupted/intercepted?

Interface Guidelines for Usable Security

• Enable the user to express safe security policies that fit the user’s task.
  • What are some examples of security policies that users might want enforced for typical tasks?
  • How can the user express these policies?
  • How can the expression of policy be brought closer to the task?
• Draw distinction among objects and actions along boundaries relevant to the task.
  • At what level of details does the interface allow objects and actions to be separately manipulated?
  • What distinction between affected objects and unaffected objects does the user care about?
• Present objects and actions using distinguishable, truthful appearances.
  • How does the user identify and distinguish different objects and actions?
  • In what ways can the means of identification be controlled by other parties?
  • What aspects of an object’s appearances are under system control?
  • How can those aspects be chosen to best prevent deception?