Editor's Message to Special Issue of Usable Security
Akira Kanaoka · Journal of Information Processing · 2020
A special issue of "Usable Security" has just been published.On behalf of the Editorial Board, I would like to express our gratitude.This special issue was planned in the first half of 2019.The editorial board of 26 members was formed.The call for papers was opened in October of the same year.19 submissions were received after 5 months of the submission period, and 14 papers (including 3 in English) were finally accepted after 6 months of review and referral period.The acceptance rate was 74%.The special issue on "Usable Security" was also planned and published last year.We can consider that the usable security research in Japan has reached a certain maturity level because of the high quality of the papers submitted in the previous issue.Considering the thrusts of increasing sophistication and society's growing demands, this special issue is named after the same title, "Usable Security."We call for papers on usable security technology and privacy protection technology considering human use in this special issue.The security is based on information security and also includes privacy protection.The research group on Security Psychology and Trust (SPT), the parent organization of this special issue, has been continuously presenting research papers and holding workshops on usable security since 2017.In this special issue, the call for papers' scope is flexible because we do not consider usable security as a fixed field, but as something that will be established by the authors, the readers, and future researchers.The scope of the call for papers includes research that analyzes and improves convenience and efficiency in the fields of network security, computer security, and data privacy; research on operational research; research on cyber-attack methods that take advantage of human use and countermeasures; research on error occurrence; and research on ethics and obtaining user consent.In this special issue, in addition to research papers, we have organized the so-called Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers to evaluate and systematize existing research, provide new insights, and reappraisals into existing research areas and new taxonomies, as well as research methods and evaluation methods in our field.SoK papers were evaluated according to a different peer-review policy than the usual research papers.In the peer-review process, we emphasized our policy of "Do not throw away gems even if you can pick up stones (Do not reject good papers even if you can pick up bad papers)" and spent much time in the editorial committee to discuss carefully to expand the 1