Open Problems for Usable and Secure Open Systems

In open computing systems, resources are shared across organizational boundaries in an effort to allow for greater access to information and easier collaboration between geographically and administratively dispersed groups. Designing adequate access control solutions for these types of systems is a challenging task, as traditional solutions tend to exhibit failures or other undesirable behaviors in the face of an ever-growing and constantly evolving user base. To address these types of shortcomings, security researchers have proposed the notion of attribute-based access control (ABAC). Though the theoretical and systems issues associated with ABAC are currently being investigated, the human side of ABAC is relatively unexplored. In this paper, we discuss several usability and human factors challenges related to a promising ABAC solution known as trust negotiation. ACM Classification