Our research into the human factors of cybersecurity focuses on people as social actors whose security behaviors are influenced by their relationships, communities and life situations.

We leverage insights from social psychology and other fields to develop novel interventions and strategies for nudging adoption of expert-recommended tools and practices, such as using multi-factor authentication, creating unique passwords and regularly updating software.

Find us on the 3rd floor of Newell-Simon Hall at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. We are sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant no. CNS-1704087.

Research Thrusts + Current Projects

Mini-Games

Everyday Interventions

  • Safesea plugin for Google Chrome browser [Poster]

Adoption Strategies

Selected Papers

  • Cori Faklaris, Laura Dabbish and Jason I. Hong. 2019. A Self-Report Measure of End-User Security Attitudes (SA-6). In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2019). USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA. Preprint DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29840.05125/3
  • Sauvik Das, Laura Dabbish and Jason I. Hong. 2019. A Typology of Perceived Triggers for End-User Security and Privacy Behaviors. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2019). USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA. Available at: https://sauvikdas.com/uploads/paper/pdf/21/file.pdf
  • Cheul Young Park, Cori Faklaris, Siyan Zhao, Alex Sciuto, Laura Dabbish and Jason I. Hong. 2018. Share and Share Alike? An Exploration of Secure Behaviors in Romantic Relationships. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2018). USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA. Available at: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/soups2018/soups2018-park.pdf
  • Cori Faklaris. 2018. Social Cybersecurity and the Help Desk: New Ideas for IT Professionals to Foster Secure Workgroup Behaviors. Workshop paper in the Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Security Information Workers (WSIW 2018), Aug. 12, 2018,in Baltimore, MD, USA. USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA. DOI: https://doi. org/10.13140/RG.2.2.35580.23686
  • Sauvik Das, Joanne Lo, Laura Dabbish, and Jason I. Hong. 2018. Breaking! A Typology of Security and Privacy News and How It's Shared. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 1, 12 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1145/3173574.3173575
  • Sauvik Das, Adam D.I. Kramer, Laura A. Dabbish, and Jason I. Hong. 2015. The Role of Social Influence in Security Feature Adoption. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1416-1426. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/ 2675133.2675225
  • Sauvik Das, Adam D.I. Kramer, Laura A. Dabbish, and Jason I. Hong. 2014. Increasing Security Sensitivity With Social Proof: A Large-Scale Experimental Confirmation. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 739-749. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/ 2660267.2660271
  • Sauvik Das, Tiffany Hyun-Jin Kim, Laura A. Dabbish, and Jason I. Hong. 2014. The Effect of Social Influence on Security Sensitivity. In Proceedings of the Tenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2014). USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA. Available at: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/soups2014/ soups14-paper- das.pdf

Selected Posters

  • Tianying Chen, Jessica Hammer, and Laura Dabbish. 2019. Self-Efficacy-Based Game Design to Encourage Security Behavior Online. Poster and extended abstract for the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper LBW1610, 6 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312935
  • Gustavo Umbelino, Rosie Sun, Cori Faklaris, Jason I. Hong, and Laura Dabbish. 2019. Safesea: A Chrome Plugin to Crowdsource Privacy Settings. Poster presentation for CMU Privacy Day at Carnegie Mellon University, Feb. 1, 2019. Available at: http://cups.cs.cmu. edu/privacy-day/2019/
  • Cori Faklaris, Laura Dabbish and Jason Hong. 2018. Adapting the Transtheoretical Model for the Design of Security Interventions. Poster and abstract for the Fourteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security Adjunct (SOUPS 2018), Aug. 12-14, 2018,in Baltimore, MD, USA. USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.15447.57760