NJIT IS/CS 485 - Usable Security & Privacy - Fall 2024
Logistics
This course is scheduled to meet at Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Center (ME) 221 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:00 PM – 5:20 PM.
The CRN for the IS section of this course is 95790; for CS it’s 95792.
Prerequisites
Enrolling students are expected to have passed one of the following courses:
- IT 230. Computer and Network Security
- CS 351. Introduction to Cybersecurity
- CS 608. Cryptography and Security
- CS 645. Security and Privacy in Computer Systems
Additionally, the following courses are recommended:
- IS 247 - Designing the user experience
- IS 375 - Discovering user needs for UX
- IS 448 - Usability & measuring UX
- IT 331 - Privacy & information technology
If you have a strong interest in the topic but lack the formal prerequisites, please contact me in advance.
Topic overview
The course will cover the following topics:
Security
- Passwords and potential alternatives
- Multi-factor authentication
- Warnings and phishing
- Mobile permissions
- Authentication
- Access control
Privacy
- Social media privacy
- Online tracking
- Privacy policies
- AR/VR privacy
- Smart home privacy
- Deceptive design patterns
Special populations
- At-risk users
- Software developers and system administrators
- Children
- Accessibility in security
- Anonymity needs and tools
Learning outcomes
Students completing this course will:
- Discuss concrete instances of security and privacy failures in common technologies
- Be able to explain how human factors contributed to these issues
- Learn about research findings in a variety of domains in usable privacy and security
- Practice methodologies for evaluating the usability of systems
- Understand how to apply human-centered design for security and privacy systems
IS/CS 698, Human Factors in Security and Privacy, is a graduate, research-oriented seminar course, enrolling a mix of masters and PhD students. Its goal is to help students understand, evaluate, and contribute to cutting-edge research. To that end, a major focus of that course is reading, discussing, and analyzing research papers; students also work on a semester-long research project. In IS/CS 485, the focus will be on learning the lessons from the research field’s findings and how to apply them. The course will be primarily centered around lectures (though with significant active learning components), which will synthesize takeaways from state of the art research. However, students will still gain practical experience with research methods used in the human-computer interaction field through several hands-on projects.
Calendar
Please keep in mind that the schedule may change as the course progresses, so please regularly check the course website for any changes.
Footnotes
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