The CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) brings together researchers working on a diverse set of projects related to understanding and improving the usability of privacy and security software and systems. Our research employs a combination of three high-level strategies to make secure systems more usable: building systems that “just work” without involving humans in security-critical functions; making secure systems intuitive and easy to use; and teaching humans how to perform security-critical tasks.
CUPS is affiliated with Carnegie Mellon CyLab. Our research is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) Portugal under a grant from the Information and Communications Technology Institute (ICTI) at CMU, Microsoft, DG Foundation, The Privacy Projects, and Google. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or any of our other funders. Wombat Security Technologies, Inc. is commercializing some of the technologies we developed.