Firewall information and security visualization : improving the usage and adoption of modern network firewalls by novice users

Abstract

The increasing number of people having access to computers and the Internet and the numerous services provided by the Internet - e.g., Internet banking, online shopping, eBay, email - emphasizes the need for computer security which is understandable to novice users. Whilst the technology underlying a firewall is effective, most users have no idea how to configure the software to suit their needs. This research focuses on personal firewalls because it is our belief and I will show that personal firewalls are more at risk than those of large corporations. Our hypothesis for this research is that many of the users who install personal firewalls lack the knowledge to properly configure them. We propose that the problem with a personal firewall is that most users do not have the correct conceptual models of interaction between computer, firewall, and security in order to configure these personal firewalls correctly. We aim to use information visualization [3] as a possible solution to the problem of novice users configuring their personal firewalls.