We are happy to announce that a new paper was accepted for publication: Nudging Users towards Online Safety using Gamified Environments. The paper is written by Yelena Petrykina, Hadas Schwartz-Chassidim, and Eran Toch, and discusses a user study in which we have assessed the impact of gamification for nudging users towards a safer online behavior. The paper was accepted to the Computers and Security Journal and should be available soon.
Security Robot
Abstract
Humans are increasingly becoming the root cause of many security vulnerabilities that can compromise a whole network through erroneous or negligent behavior. Human vulnerability is a serious challenge, as users are very limited in their attention to information security warnings and guidelines. This paper describes Security-Robot, a gamified interactive security system that rewards users according to their online security behavior. We evaluate our approach in a controlled experiment against traditional security messages when users need to download software that may be malicious under time pressure. Our results show that a gamified experience reduces the number of downloaded malware without reducing productivity and that presenting preemptive notifications strengthens this effect. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings to the theory of usable security and the design of interactive security systems.
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