A Scalable Inclusive Security Intervention to Center Marginalized & Vulnerable Populations in Security & Privacy Design

Research in computer security has increasingly considered the needs of marginalized and vulnerable groups in technology. Through this work, we hope to translate this research movement into practice and, ultimately, cause designers-in-training (and, eventually, designers) to consider a more inclusive range of stakeholders. Thus, we created an educational intervention to center marginalized and vulnerable populations in the context of threat modeling. We find that computer security students are more likely to consider unique threats and vulnerabilities facing marginalized and vulnerable populations after being exposed to an intervention prompting them to think about populations that might often be overlooked. We suggest practical methods to teach designers-in-training inclusive methods in computer security and discuss other possible adoptions of this practice across the field. This work is part of an important shift toward inclusive security that centers marginalized and vulnerable populations both in research and in practice.