Human, Organizational, and Technological Factors of IT Security

This paper describes the HOT Admin research project, which is investigating the human, organizational, and technological factors of IT security from the perspective of security practitioners. We use qualitative methods to examine their experiences along several themes including: unique characteristics of this population, the challenges they face within the organization, their activities, their collaborative interactions with other stakeholders, the sub-optimal situations they face as a result of distributed security management, and the impact of the security management model in place. We present preliminary results for each theme, as well as the implications of these results on the field of usable security and other research areas within HCI.