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Firewalls Usability: An Experiment Investigating the Usability of Personal Firewalls

Authors:
Bander ALFayyadh
Mohammed AlZomai
Audun Jøsang

Keywords: Usability; Security; Firewalls

Abstract:
Poor usability of IT security systems and applications represents a serious security vulnerability, which can be exploited to compromise systems that otherwise could be considered technically secure. This problem is of particular concern with the huge number of users regularly connecting to the Internet but who know very little about the principles of IT security. Personal firewalls are important security mechanisms for protecting users against Internet security threats. However, the knowledge and skills required to effectively operate some aspects of a personal firewall may surpass the capability of the average user. In previous work, we conducted a usability evaluation of personal firewall by cognitive walkthrough against a set of security usability principles. We concluded that there are many usability issues of personal firewalls that can cause security vulnerabilities. In this paper, we report the results of a practical usability experiment with participants using commercial firewalls in a controlled environment. The experiment setup is described and participants’ feedback and behavior are analysed to evaluate the impact of usability of a modern firewall on the overall security of personal workstations.

Pages: 54 to 60

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013

Publication date: August 25, 2013

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2162-2116

ISBN: 978-1-61208-298-1

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from August 25, 2013 to August 31, 2013