Who is security and privacy research for? Analysis on meta-data from relevant publications

Security and privacy (S&P) research aims to protect people by mitigating potential risks of technology. While there are many success stories in our field doing just this, the impact of the research remains unclear. The understanding of who is the security and privacy research for can be achieved by exploring the Usable S&P papers along with traditional security privacy papers. I seek to contribute a better understanding of who is the S&P research for by performing an analysis of metadata (e.g., author affiliation, geographic location, user study conducted, citations) of 907 security and privacy papers published at the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX) and Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) between 2015 and 2021. In this paper, I present these results and use evidence from prior work to consider the implications of our findings in terms of who benefits most from S&P work. I also highlight the differences and similarities between general S&P, and Usable S&P, along with the prior work on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). For example, in all three, a disproportionate amount of research is conducted in western countries, which likely means that the work disproportionately addresses the needs of people in those locales and excludes people in other places. I conclude by providing discussions and recommendations to diversify the conference such that it includes different viewpoints, cultures, and values.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Mathew, Raima

Contributors dc:contributor

• Cobb, Camille

• Security and privacy (S&P)
• Usable S&P
• USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX)
• Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS)
• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Raima Mathew

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115604

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115604