Paper Info
Title
Secure or usable computers? Revealing employees' perceptions and trade-offs by means of a discrete choice experiment.
Abstract
It is often suggested in the literature that employees regard technical security measures (TSMs) as user-unfriendly, indicating a trade-off between security and usability. However, there is little empirical evidence of such a trade-off, nor about the strength of the associated negative correlation and the importance employees attach to both properties. This paper intends to fill these knowledge gaps by studying employees’ trade-offs concerning the usability and security of TSMs within a discrete choice experiment (DCE) framework. In our DCE, employees are asked to indicate the most preferred security packages that describe combinations of TSMs. In addition, security and usability perceptions of the security packages are explicitly measured and modelled. The models estimated from these observed responses indicate how each TSM affects perceived security, perceived usability and preference. The paper further illustrates how the modelling results can be applied to design highly secure packages that are still preferred by employees. The paper also makes a methodological contribution to the literature by introducing discrete choice experiments to the field of information security.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1016/j.cose.2018.03.003
Computers & Security
Keywords
Field
DocType
Information security,Security measures,Security perception,Usability perception,Discrete choice experiments,Discrete choice models,Employees' preferences
USable,Internet privacy,Negative correlation,Empirical evidence,Computer science,Usability,Knowledge management,Information security,Trade offs,Discrete choice,Perception
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
77
0167-4048
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
16
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Eric J. E. Molin151.47
Kirsten Meeuwisse200.34
Wolter Pieters322628.57
Caspar G. Chorus483.71