ITAC President Anne Wallace Urges Security Professionals to Think Outside the Desktop

January 27, 2011 – 3:03 am

Writing in American Banker this week, ITAC President Anne Wallace challenged RSA conference-goers to rethink computer security in a way that compels consumers to embrace it. It’s time they think more like consumer product developers and marketers, and makes her case in the excerpt below:

Consumer electronics companies are masters at understanding human behavior and creating products that anticipate and respond to human wants and needs. The most successful devices, and the applications that support them, are indispensable to their owners. By understanding how we behave today and what we will want tomorrow, Apple, Motorola and Research In Motion create compelling relationships between device and user.

The smartest processes, and the best technologies, are not effective if people do not want to use them, avoid them or will not update them. Technology and processes depend on user adoption and consistent use to be effective. This appears to be the Achilles heel in our current approach to cybersecurity.

Is it crazy to suggest that we create new gadgets and technologies for security that are appealing and that people will want to use? It must be possible to design a technology that delivers such obvious value that people will want to have a relationship. I admit it is hard to imagine consumers lining up for the latest version of MyCyberSecurityBlanket the way they did for the iPad, or downloading the latest security app the way they downloaded Angry Birds, but shouldn’t that be our inspiration?

In order to recruiting citizens in the war on cybercrime, the industry must develop and market tools that are easy-to-use, intuitive, unobtrusive and maybe even emotionally rewarding.

Maybe there will be an app for that in 2012.

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