Keynote Address: Wait, there are people here? Using HCI methods to answer impactful security and privacy questions

Chair: Kevin Butler

Wait, there are people here? Using HCI methods to answer impactful security and privacy questions

Michelle Mazurek, Associate Professor, University of Maryland

Abstract: 

Questions of security, privacy, and safety are often fundamentally questions about people and power relations, and security and privacy research increasingly reflects this fact. Drawing on methods from HCI and social science can help researchers ask good questions and obtain impactful answers that enrich technical security and privacy research by situating it within a human context. In this talk, I will discuss how to ask meaningful questions about why problems occur and how security and privacy tools work in practice. Drawing on examples from my research, I will discuss how to answer these questions by finding or creating meaningful data sources that appropriately balance ecological validity, as well as choosing meaningful methods for elicitation and analysis, including but not limited to qualitative methods.

Bio:

Michelle Mazurek is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also directs the Maryland Cybersecurity Center. Her research aims to understand and improve the human elements of security- and privacy-related decision making. Recent projects include examining how and why developers make security and privacy mistakes; investigating the vulnerability-discovery process; evaluating the use of threat-modeling in large-scale organizations; and analyzing how users learn about and decide whether to adopt security advice. She was Program Chair for the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) for 2019 and 2020 and is Program Chair for the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) for 2022 and 2023.

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