An important factor that impacts the effectiveness of security systems within an organization is the usability of security management tools. In this paper, we present a survey of design guidelines for such tools. We gathered guidelines and recommendations related to IT security management tools from the literature as well as from our own prior studies of IT security management. We categorized and combined these into a set of high level guidelines and identified the relationships between the guidelines and challenges in IT security management. We also illustrated the need for the guidelines, where possible, with quotes from additional interviews with five security practitioners. Our framework of guidelines can be used by those developing IT security tools, as well as by practitioners and managers evaluating tools.

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We used an iterative process to design personal firewall warnings in which the functionality of a firewall is visualized based on a physical security mental model. We performed a study to determine the degree to which our proposed warnings are understandable for our participants, and the degree to which they convey the risks and encourage safe behavior as compared to warnings based on those from a popular personal firewall. Initial results show that our warnings facilitate the comprehension of warning information, better communicate risk, and increase the likelihood of safe behavior. Moreover, they provided participants with a better understanding of both the functionality of a personal firewall and the consequences of their actions.

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