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Human factors engineering takes into account human capabilities and limitations for designing products, processes, systems and work environments. By adapting and simplifying the user interfaces of hardware and software, system performance and reliability can be improved.
For software applications and platforms used for security in critical environments, such as defense or banking, it is vital that product design takes into account the volume and complexity of the information to be processed and the prior knowledge and skills of users in terms of security concepts and the use of IT applications.
It is usually the system administrators who are in charge of the security of a corporation's IT systems. In some cases, generally in large organizations, these are specialized security staff who are experts in the most critical technologies and concepts. In many cases, however, the administrators are not specialized in the security field, and integrating security applications can represent an added difficulty.
This situation is even more critical when the end users are responsible for managing security. It is clear that the technologies are evolving toward ubiquitous computing with a user-centric philosophy in which the users themselves start processes or are involved in processes initiated by other agents in the environment. For this reason, it is vital to assist users in making decisions on the security and trust of the processes and help them understand the implications of these decisions.
Furthermore, if the volume or complexity of the security information is too much for users, incorporating security can be counterproductive. In this situation, security measures may cause confusion among administrators resulting in system errors, which, far from improving the overall security of the system, makes it worse, and may even make the system inoperative.
It is, therefore, necessary to apply ergonomic concepts to the design of applications, which means taking into account the different levels of experience users may have. Application interfaces must be intuitive and feature the necessary help tools to minimize the chance of user confusion and error. To this end, Safelayer is working to improve the interfaces of its products, as in the case with TrustedX's graphical console. New versions of the product will have a console that makes configuring policies far more intuitive while maintaining the product's current flexibility.
It is equally important that the concepts dealt with and displayed are clear and do not give rise to confusion. This requires that the use of information display and representation tools—along with the properties that semantic languages can contribute—be decisive in helping to interpret security and trust information to facilitate end-user use and critical decision-making on security and trust.
So, human factors engineering and ergonomics can reduce operating errors, improve system performance and reliability—which often depends on user actions, and increase the positive perception of security systems to facilitate their implantation in work and domestic environments. |
