In the wake of the high-profile celebrity photo hack and revelations about digital privacy, Google, Dropbox and the Open Technology Fund are throwing their support behind a new organization dedicated to making security simpler and more effective.
It's called Simply Secure, and its mission is pretty straightforward: to make security easier to use, to ensure that technology respects the privacy of users and to empower people on how to properly use existing open-source security options. The organization will be working closely with security software creators to lend their expertise.
"While consumer-facing security tools exist and are technically effective, they often have low adoption rates because they're inconvenient or too confusing for the average person to operate," says Simply Secure in a press release. "Even well-known features like two-factor authentication, offered by many online services, are not widely used."
The organization goes on to say that "no matter how effective security technologies are, people will not use them unless they become more accessible and easier to understand. We need simpler options for stronger security, available at our fingertips."
Which is where Simply Secure comes in. By collaborating with and providing resources for the existing open-source security community, Simply Secure hopes it can improve usability and security for devices and services.
"There are already many credible and exciting software-development efforts that aim to make privacy and security ubiquitous," the organization states in its first blog post. "Rather than create redundant initiatives, we will focus on supporting existing open source work by providing usability and development expertise, direct ties to user communities, connections to funding sources, and other resources."
Speaking of expertise, the organization's advisory board definitely knows a thing or two about digital security. Sara "Scout" Sinclair Brody, a product manager at Google, leads Simply Secure as director after having worked on two-step verification, the Android operating system and uProxy. Other members of the organization include Google security engineer Ben Laurie; Wendy Seltzer, policy counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium; and Angela Sasse, head of information security research and director of the Science of Cyber Security Research Institute at University College London.
"We hope that this effort will result in more pleasing and robust tools that meet users' privacy and security needs where they are - from layering additional security on top of popular name-brand cloud platforms, to augmenting small, stand-alone mobile apps," the organization says.
It's an important step forward as tech giants are increasingly becoming aware of privacy and security concerns from their consumers. While Simply Secure won't be providing a quick-fix for digital security, providing resources and expertise to improving the current landscape can only be good in the long-term.
