000000187 001__ 187
000000187 005__ 20130522141942.0
000000187 037__ $$aLERSSE-RefConfPaper-2009-034
000000187 041__ $$aeng
000000187 100__ $$aFahimeh Raja
000000187 100__ $$aKirstie Hawkey
000000187 100__ $$aKonstantin Beznosov
000000187 245__ $$aRevealing Hidden Context: Improving Mental Models of Personal Firewall Users
000000187 260__ $$c2009-07-15
000000187 300__ $$a12p
000000187 520__ $$a
    The Windows Vista personal firewall provides its diverse users with a basic interface that hides many operational details. However, concealing the impact of network context on the security state of the firewall may result in users developing an incorrect mental model of the protection provided by the firewall.  We present a study of participants' mental models of Vista Firewall (VF). We investigated changes to those mental models and their understanding of the firewall's settings after working with both the VF basic interface and our prototype. Our prototype was designed to support development of a more contextually complete mental model through inclusion of network location and connection information. We found that participants produced richer mental models after using the prototype than when working with the VF basic interface; they were also significantly more accurate in their understanding of the configuration of the firewall.  Based on our results, we discuss methods of improving user understanding of underlying system states by revealing hidden context, while considering the tension between complexity of the interface and security of the system.
    
000000187 6531_ $$aUsable security
000000187 6531_ $$a firewall
000000187 6531_ $$a configuration
000000187 6531_ $$amental model
000000187 6531_ $$aissnet
000000187 8560_ $$fbeznosov@ece.ubc.ca
000000187 8564_ $$uhttp://lersse-dl.ece.ubc.ca/record/187/files/187.pdf$$yTransfer from CDS 0.99.7
000000187 909C4 $$pFahimeh Raja, Kirstie Hawkey, and Konstantin Beznosov. Revealing hidden context: Improving
mental models of personal firewall users. In SOUPS '09: Proceedings of the 5th
symposium on Usable privacy and security, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM, pp 1-12.
    
000000187 980__ $$aRefConfPaper