Section 30.1. Usable Secure Collaboration


30.1. Usable Secure Collaboration

Collaborative applications offer a particularly rich environment to explore approaches to usable security, as can be seen in several of the vendor chapters in this book. Because they are user-to-user applications, collaborative applications have high profiles and aggressive usability goals. Collaborating on potentially sensitive topics requires both open sharing and tight control, depending on the users, the tasks, and the information being manipulated. Both administrators and end users are involved directly and indirectly in using collaborative application security features. In fact, end users sometimes act as administrators for groupings of collaborative objects, increasing the power and complexity of the functions they are expected to take on.

This chapter discusses several specific security features that have been embedded in the collaborative application infrastructure of IBM® Lotus® Notes® and IBM Lotus Domino® (see the sidebar). The goal of embedding security in this collaborative platform is to make it a seamless and integral part of tasks that are meaningful to users. The features we discuss illustrate both successes and current shortcomings to both this approach and our execution of it. The features covered here include public key infrastructure (PKI), security-specific information displays, and security controls on active content.

The Lotus Domino public key infrastructure is perhaps the most widely deployed PKI in the world, with more than 114 million licenses. It is embedded in the Notes end user and administrative architectures; many features cannot be used without it. It is used for authentication of the Notes client to the Domino server, signing and encrypting mail messages, and administrative accountability and trust. In the next section, we discuss how many confusing key management and related concepts are completely hidden from users through the use of application-specific features and enterprise-use norms. Users do need both the Notes rich client and their own keyfile to take advantage of many of these features, although recent architectural updates are making mail encryption and signing available from the Domino browser user interface.

There are two major areas of security-related information for end users: security information about themselves and security information about an application database. User security information was brought together in a single security panel in a recent release of Notes. The Access Control dialog displays the control information for a database that holds a single instance of a Notes application. Later in this chapter, we discuss the usability process for, and features of, these dialogs, and the benefits we are seeing from them.

Protections on active content were introduced into version 4.5 of Notes. We were able to observe both the usability of the controls and how easily they can be used to ensure secure behavior on the part of users in a study of a 500-person organization. The study showed that when you tell people to click a button to get a more secure configuration, most will do so. The same study showed that when the same user population is asked if they would like to subvert that security to proceed with their current task, most will do so. Later, we discuss the implications of pushing security-relevant decisions down to the user.



Security and Usability. Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use
Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems That People Can Use
ISBN: 0596008279
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 295

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