Are Usability & Security Opposites in Computing?

krozinov writes "Instinct tells us that computer security and computer usability are inversely proportional to each other. In other words, the tougher and stricter the security is, the less usability there is, and vice versa. However, there have been plenty of cases where both computer security and computer usability went hand in hand with each other and actually improved together. In the last few years security has been the biggest buzzword in computer systems and as such has become part of our computer systems. Before that, computer systems were all about getting it done faster and easier, but now they must also do it securely. Can the two continue growing together? This paper argues that it can, as evident by the most recent Indian Assembly Election."

Comments

Of course not.

[reynaert]

Most applications manage being both unusable and insecure just fine.

Re:My Soapbox

[stecoop]

I especially like the policies where your account is locked for something like 30 minutes on N bad password attempts. I like trying to guess what the boss's password is right before a high-level critical presentation. For some reason administrator account doesn't ever get locked though; that's too bad huh?

Re:No, I call that bad intuition.

[henrycoderm]

Isn't people entering through the Windows the main problem?