Acquisti Receives NSF Cyber Trust Award
NSF Cyber Trust Grant Awarded to Carnegie Mellon Researchers
Alessandro Acquisti, Heinz School Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Public Policy, is a member of a team of Carnegie Mellon researchers who recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of over $1 million as part of the NSF's 2005 Cyber Trust program, which focuses on improving the dependability and security of computer systems and networks.
The goal of the Carnegie Mellon research project, entitled Supporting Trust Decisions, is to develop approaches to supporting users when they make trust decisions on the Internet so that they make the best decisions possible. Internet users frequently make trust decisions online, such as whether or not to open an email attachment or provide information to certain parties. If they make the wrong decisions, they can infect their own computers with malware or spyware, spread malware to others, or give out personal
information to the wrong people.
One response to this problem is to develop systems that make trust or security decisions on behalf of the user, but this is not always the best solution. The Carnegie Mellon team is looking for ways to make sure that when users do have to make a trust decision online, they make the right one. The researchers will first study how people make trust decisions online and then develop and evaluate new software and design patterns to help them make these decisions.
The team is headed by Cylab's Lorrie Cranor. In addition to Acquisti, members include Norman Sadeh, Julie Downs, Jason Hong and Sven Dietrich.