Recommitment to Usable Security

We’re a few days into 2020, and like a lot of people I’ve tried to set my intentions/goals for the year. One of those intentions is to recommit myself to studying and learning about the field of Usable Security.

In a past life, I was a PhD student at the University of Florida studying Usable Security as part of the Human-Centered Computing Program. For a few reasons that I won’t get into, I left the program after my first year to work at Duo Security. Looking back, I’m so glad that I made that decision. It has afforded me the opportunity to work with great people and to work on some really cool projects. Unfortunately, most of my work as a Data Scientist doesn’t afford me the opportunity to work in the Usable Security space. To pile on, my pursuit of a master’s degree didn’t allow me to really scratch that itch or really do much of anything outside of work. But with that degree completed and with a bit of free time back, I want to invest that time in learning and growing in an area I’m passionate about.

So my goal for 2020 is to read more usable security papers and to write some paper summaries as way of solidifying my understanding of what I read as well as improve my technical writing. I’m hoping to write at least one paper summary a week in the style of the morning paper.

I like to look for tools to hold myself accountable and now that I’ve written this post and put it on the Internet I guess I’ve found one for this goal :).