Matthew Smith Email & Phone Number

I am a Computer Science Professor at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, a member of the Fraunhofer FKIE in Bonn and an advisor to the Code-Intelligence Start-up. My research interests lie in the intersection of technical IT security & privacy and behavioural research. I study the interaction effects between technical and psychological, social, economic, cognitive, and emotional factors related to the security and privacy behaviour of individuals and institutions.Usability problems are a major cause of many of today’s IT-security incidents. Security systems are often too complicated, time-consuming, and error prone. For more than a decade researchers in the domain of usable security (USEC) have attempted to combat these problems by conducting interdisciplinary research focusing on the root causes of the end-user problems and on the creation of usable security mechanisms. I am currently particularly focusing on the human factors of experts such as IT administrators and developers, since many of the most catastrophic security incidents were not caused by end-users, but by developers or administrators. Heartbleed and Shellshock were both caused by single developers yet had global consequences. The recent Sony hack compromised an entire multi-national IT-infrastructure and misappropriated over 100 TB of data, unnoticed. Fundamentally, every software vulnerability and misconfigured system is caused by developers or administrators making mistakes. My group and I are studying these kind of incidents and developing strategies to prevent them from happening in the future.If you would like to discuss any of the above in more detail please feel free to message me on LinkedIn or contact me on:www.code-intelligence.com

Listed skills include Science and Latex.