Home and Away: UI Design Patterns for Supporting End-User Security

This paper presents a set of patterns for user interface designers to help users better protect themselves from cyberattacks. The basic idea is to create and support mental models of cybersecurity that resembles the way people manage security in the physical world. The patterns therefore focus on conceptual strategies, and allow a range of UI designs appropriate to different platforms, including desktop, web, and mobile presentations. This idea stems from focus group studies of how people manage everyday security, and our identification of the common steps that people follow. A key concept that emerged was the distinction between being 'home', where they were present and engaged, and 'away', when they were distant. The common steps involved preparation for being away, and what to do on return. Our cybersecurity patterns suggest and support similar behaviour online. The patterns already have known uses, but many others are possible, and greater use and consistency would be beneficial.