Integrating Human Factors in the Visualisation of Usable Transparency for Dynamic Risk Assessment

Abstract

Modern technology and the digitisation era accelerated the pace of data generation and collection for various purposes. The orchestration of such data is a daily challenge faced by even experienced professional users in the context of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled environments, especially when it comes to cybersecurity and privacy risks. This article presents the application of a user-centric process for the visualisation of automated decision making security interventions. The user interface (UI) development was guided by iterative feedback collection from user studies on the visualisation of a dynamic risk assessment (DRA)-based security solution for regular lay users. The methodology we applied starts with the definition of the methodological process to map possible technical actions to related usable actions. The definition and refinement of the user interface (UI) was controlled by the survey feedback loop from end user studies on their general technological knowledge, experience with smart homes, cybersecurity awareness and privacy preservation needs. We continuously improved the visualisation interfaces for configuring a cybersecurity solution and adjusting usable transparency of the control and monitoring of the dynamic risk assessment (DRA). For this purpose, we have designed, developed and validated a decision tree workflow and showed the evolution of the interfaces through various stages of the real-life trials executed under European H2020 project GHOST.