Security Specialists Consult Psychologists

    The British association KTN , which brings together experts in the field of computer security, has turned to experts in human behavior , including psychologists, sociologists, marketers, specialists in religion, sects, as well as in design and ergonomics.

    KTN gave a grant of £ 50,000 (about $ 100,000) to create an ad hoc working group and tasked it with finding new ideas from other disciplines for computer security. "Specialists in people" of completely different professions know human nature from different angles. They really can help.

    As you know, most hacks in any computer system are caused by a human factor. Firstly, bad memory for passwords. Someone wrote a password and attached it on the monitor or stored in an unencrypted file, someone reported his password via ICQ (the ICQ history is usually stored in a text file), someone uses the same password at all on different services . In general, users maliciously ignore the basic rules of computer security, and the security department can do nothing about it. No training courses and educational programs work trite! People do not want to remember ten-digit passwords from random combinations of characters. Obviously, you need to look for some other way out.

    Bad memory for symbols is not the only problem of the human brain. There are other shortcomings, because of which the security of computer systems is greatly affected. For example, vulnerability to “social hacking,” when people are willing to voluntarily give their interlocutor secret information (for example, a password). People easily fall into a trance, vulnerable to neuro-linguistic programming, exposure to the opposite sex, and many other factors. Because of this peculiarity of their nature, people store information very poorly and are happy to report it to the first person they come across.

    Another big problem is unsafe user behavior when communicating online. Consultations of specialists will allow computer scientists to create software and systems of a new generation, taking into account the characteristics of human psychology. The main goal is that even a completely inexperienced user can use the system and at the same time he would be as protected as possible.

    The results of the KTN group will be published in early 2007.

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