Security and usability research using a microworld environment

Technological developments and the addition of new features to existing applications or services require the inclusion of security mechanisms to protect the user. When using these mechanisms the user faces a tradeoff between more risky and more efficient or safer and less efficient use of the system. We discuss this tradeoff and present a novel complementary experimental system which provides researchers and corporations the ability to explore and model the usability and security tradeoff in the context of user interaction with security systems and psychological acceptability, even before the actual development and implementation processes have ended.