Human-Centered Security: How to Design Systems That Are Both Safe and Usable [Paperback]

In our interconnected world, we face a complex cybersecurity ecosystem where digital vulnerabilities can have far-reaching consequences. Threats to digital infrastructure often impact critical physical systems, potentially causing real-world harm. With AI agents set to handle extensive personal information, data security and privacy are more crucial than ever.

Human-Centered Securitytargets professionals designing digital products that handle sensitive data: UX designers, engineers, and product managers. It's also for those responsible for securing organizational data and systems: security engineers, CISOs, CIOs, and teams focused on risk management, legal, privacy, and compliance.

These professionals influence security-related behaviors and possess deep knowledge of threats to their products or organizations. This places a significant responsibility on them to design resilient systems that encourage safer outcomes. As the stakes continue to rise in our digital landscape, their role in protecting users from evolving cybersecurity risks becomes increasingly vital.

• Focus on areas of the user experience where security impacts users the most.These are places where users are signing up, configuring a product for the first time, handling customer or patient data, or when confronted with a security or privacy-related message or warning, to name a few.
• Understand the dynamics of the security ecosystem.Looking at the security ecosystem from a single vantage point won’t work. Instead, you need to understand how the system design impacts users, how user actions prompt changes to the system design, how threat actors take advantage, how threat actors actions prompt changes to the system design, how users react, and on and on.
• Find your security UX allies.Think of a Venn diagram, withló'