Security vs. Usability: “

Good essay: ‘When Security Gets in the Way.’

The numerous incidents of defeating security measures prompts my cynical slogan: The more secure you make something, the less secure it becomes. Why? Because when security gets in the way, sensible, well-meaning, dedicated people develop hacks and workarounds that defeat the security. Hence the prevalence of doors propped open by bricks and wastebaskets, of passwords pasted on the fronts of monitors or hidden under the keyboard or in the drawer, of home keys hidden under the mat or above the doorframe or under fake rocks that can be purchased for this purpose.

We are being sent a mixed message: on the one hand, we are continually forced to use arbitrary security procedures. On the other hand, even the professionals ignore many of them. How is the ordinary person to know which ones matter and which don’t? The confusion has unexpected negative side-effects. I once discovered a computer system that was missing essential security patches. When I queried the computer’s user, I discovered that the continual warning against clicking on links or agreeing to requests from pop-up windows had been too effective. This user was so frightened of unwittingly agreeing to install all those nasty things from ‘out there’ that all requests were denied, even the ones for essential security patches. On reflection, this is sensible behavior: It is very difficult to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate. Even experts slip up, as the confessions reported occasionally in various computer digests I attest.

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(Via Schneier on Security.)