Invited Speaker Seminar: Improving End-User Cybersecurity

Professor Sonia Chiasson,
Carleton University, Ottawa

Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at 3:00 p.m.
Room EV003.309

Abstract

Our group works on usable security. We study how human behaviour impacts cybersecurity and how systems can be designed to better encourage secure behaviour. We design security applications based on understanding of security threat models and human factors such as the capabilities, constraints, and expectations of users. We explore how underlying system and interaction design choices can lead to more secure systems by decreasing chances of misuse, errors, or exploitation of security mechanisms. In this talk, I will provide an overview of our research on user susceptibility of phishing, user authentication, and mental models of security.

Biography

Sonia is the Canada Research Chair in Human Oriented Computer Security and an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She leads theCHORUS research group. Sonia is the Deputy Scientific Director of the Smart Cybersecurity Network (SERENE-RISC), a Network of Centers of Excellence of Canada. She was previously the project leader for Human Behaviour and Computer Security with NSERC Internetworked Security Systems Network (NSERC ISSNet). Her main research interests are in usable security: the intersection between human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer security. Before moving to Ottawa, she was a full-time instructor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan and a member of the HCI Lab.