Security When People Matter: Structuring Incentives for User Behavior

Abstract:     
Humans are "smart components" in a system, but cannot be directly programmed to perform; rather, their autonomymust be respected as a design constraint and incentivesprovided to induce desired behavior. Sometimes these incentives are properly aligned, and the humans don't represent a vulnerability. But often, a misalignment of incentives causes a weakness in the system that can be exploited by clever attackers. Incentive-centered design tools help us understand these problems, and provide design principles to alleviate them. We describe incentive-centered design and some tools it provides. We provide a number of examples of security problems for which Incentive Centered Design might be helpful. We elaborate with a general screening model that offers strong design principles for a class of security problems.

Accepted Paper Series