Poster: Expectations, Perceptions, and Misconceptions of Personal Firewalls

Personal firewalls are recognized as the first line of defense for personal computers. However, the protection they afford depends strongly on their correct configuration [4]. Therefore, their usability is key to their effectiveness. In particular, as users become increasingly mobile, it is important for them to be able to judge whether their computer is secure enough for the usage context at hand [2]. Our prior research [5] revealed that the lack of an accurate mental model about the firewall’s system model is one of the root causes of users’ errors when configuring the firewall. The results of a laboratory study showed that an improved user interface design that incorporated feedback about the state of the firewall in different network contexts could help users develop more effective mental models of the firewall and improve their understanding of firewall’s configuration, resulting in fewer dangerous errors. However, we also learned that a large proportion of users did not see the need for multiple profiles based on context. In this research, our goal is to better understand users’ knowledge, expectations, perceptions, and misconceptions of personal firewalls. We conducted interviews with 30 participants and analyzed the data using qualitative description [7]. The results from 10 interviews are presented in [6]. In this paper we present our aggregated results and examine their implications for the design of personal firewalls.