Humanics information security

Summary So far, information security has been focusing mainly on how to improve security and safety technologies. As people are becoming connected with a larger amount of cyber equipment, however, the human aspect in cyber security and safety has gained more attention as an essential issue. In other words, both security and usability of ICT systems have recently become much more critical to achieve. Nevertheless, as everybody knows, security and usability have a trade‐off relationship. Even when a security technology offers a high security level for an ICT system, if it greatly degrades the usability, the security technology will not be used. However, it is not always true that we can never accept any difficulty or bother. If a security technology burdens a user but the user does not notice the burden or even enjoys it, there is no problem. How people feel is key. Against this background, my colleagues and I have been studying how to combine security technologies and human factors, specifically cognitive and psychological characteristics. We call the concept “humanics information security.” This paper describes our pilot studies and explains how our humanics information security approach can effectively achieve both security and usability for ICT systems.