Fahimeh Raja ; Robert Boeck ; Ganapathy Viswanathan ; Pouyan Arjmandi

27 February 2009

Abstract: In this project we conducted a user study of Microsoft Windows Vista Firewall: a lab study followed by a questionnaire to evaluate the usability of Vista’s personal firewall. Our results show that the main problem with Windows Vista Firewall is that many users are unable to open the Advanced Management Interface of Windows Vista Firewall. Our overall impression was that users were relatively unhappy with Windows Vista’s Firewall. The most common complaint amongst participants was that they had trouble figuring out where to perform their assigned tasks. Once they managed to determine the correct location of where they had to perform the tasks, implementing them was rather easy.

Keyword(s): firewall ; usability ; security

Published in: Fahimeh Raja, Robert Boeck, Ganapathy Viswanathan, Pouyan Arjmandi, "Usability of Windows Vista Firewall: A Laboratory User Study", EECE 412 report, University of British Columbia, Canada, Fall 2007 :