Title: The Role of Computer Security Customer Support in Helping Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Technology plays an increasingly salient role in facilitating intimate partner violence (IPV). Customer support at computer security companies are receiving cases that involve tech-enabled IPV but might not be well equipped to handle these cases. To assess customer support’s existing practices and identify areas for improvement, we conducted five focus groups with professionals who work with IPV survivors (n=17). IPV professionals made numerous suggestions, such as using trauma-informed language, avoiding promises to
solve problems, and making referrals to resources and support organizations. To evaluate the practicality of these suggestions, we conducted four focus groups with customer support practitioners (n=11). Support practitioners expressed interest in training agents for IPV cases, but mentioned challenges in identifying potential survivors and frontline agents’ limited capacity to help. We conclude with recommendations for computer security companies to better address tech-enabled IPV through training support agents, tracking the prevalence of these cases, and establishing partnerships with IPV advocates. more »« less
Tseng, Emily; Freed, Diana; Engel, Kristen; Ristenpart, Thomas; Dell, Nicola(
, Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
null
(Ed.)
The shutdown measures necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 have amplified the role of technology in intimate partner violence (IPV). Survivors may be forced to endure lockdowns with their abusers, intensifying the dangers of technology-enabled abuse (e.g. stalking, harassment, monitoring, surveillance). They may also be forced to rely on potentially compromised devices to reach support networks: a dangerous dilemma for digital safety. This qualitative study examines how technologists with computer security expertise provided remote assistance to IPV survivors during the pandemic. Findings from 24 consults with survivors and five focus groups with technologist consultants show how remote delivery of technology support services raised three fundamental challenges: (1) ensuring safety for survivors and consultants; (2) assessing device security over a remote connection; and (3) navigating new burdens for consultants, including emotional labor. We highlight implications for HCI researchers creating systems that enable access to remote expert services for vulnerable people.
Trinkenreich, Bianca; Britto, Ricardo; Gerosa, Marco; Steinmacher, Igor(
, 2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (ICSE-SEIS))
Context: Addressing women's under-representation in the soft-ware industry, a widely recognized concern, requires attracting as well as retaining more women. Hearing from women practitioners, particularly those positioned in multi-cultural settings, about their challenges and and adopting their lived experienced solutions can support the design of programs to resolve the under-representation issue. Goal: We investigated the challenges women face in global software development teams, particularly what motivates women to leave their company; how those challenges might break down according to demographics; and strategies to mitigate the identified challenges. Method: To achieve this goal, we conducted an ex-ploratory case study in Ericsson, a global technology company. We surveyed 94 women and employed mixed-methods to analyze the data. Results: Our findings reveal that women face socio-cultural challenges, including work-life balance issues, benevolent and hos-tile sexism, lack of recognition and peer parity, impostor syndrome, glass ceiling bias effects, the prove-it-again phenomenon, and the maternal wall. The participants of our research provided different suggestions to address/mitigate the reported challenges, including sabbatical policies, flexibility of location and time, parenthood support, soft skills training for managers, equality of payment and opportunities between genders, mentoring and role models to sup-port career growth, directives to hire more women, inclusive groups and events, women's empowerment, and recognition for women's success. The framework of challenges and suggestions can inspire further initiatives both in academia and industry to onboard and retain women. Women represent less than 24% of employees in software development industry and experience various types of prejudice and bias. Even in companies that care about Diversity & Inclusion, “untying the mooring ropes” of socio-cultural problems is hard. Hearing from women, especially those working in a multi-cultural organization, about their challenges and adopting their suggestions can be vital to design programs and resolve the under-representation issue. In this work we work closely with a large software development or-ganization which invests and believes in diversity and inclusion. We listened to women and the challenges they face in global soft-ware development teams of this company and what these women suggest reduce the problems and increase retention. Our research showed that women face work-life balance issues and encounter invisible barriers that prevent them from rising to top positions. They also suffer micro-aggression and sexism, need to show com-petence constantly, be supervised in essential tasks, and receive less work after becoming mothers. Moreover, women miss having more female colleagues, lack self-confidence and recognition. The women from the company suggested sabbatical policies, the flexibil-ity of location and time, parenthood support, soft skills training for managers, equality of opportunities, role models to support career growth, directives to hire more women, support groups, and more interaction between women, inclusive groups and events, women's empowerment by publishing their success stories in media and recognizing their achievements. Our results had been shared with the company Human Resources department and management and they considered the diagnosis helpful and will work on actions to mitigate the challenges that women still perceive.
Knight, D. B.(
, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)
The objective of the Research on Organizational Partnerships in Education and STEM (ROPES) Hub is to advance understanding of organizational partnerships that support academic pathways for domestic low-income engineering students. Partnerships across the education system are essential for improving STEM; achieving the systematic, structural, or sustainable change desired by programs such as NSF’s Scholarships for STEM Students (S-STEM) program is seldom achieved by individual isolated units and often requires partnerships across silos within an academic institution (i.e., intra-institution partnerships) and across institutions (i.e., inter-institution partnerships). However, how such partnerships are built, designed, and sustained remains a great challenge facing the field. This Hub, led by a collaborative team from Virginia Tech, Weber State University, Northern Virginia Community College, and the University of Cincinnati, is working to organize groups to conduct research focused on supporting low-income undergraduate engineering, computer science, and computing students in ways that are congruent with the institutional context and resources while going beyond the direct impact on S-STEM Scholars to impact departments and institutions involved. We are zooming in on the institutional infrastructure and collaborative work between researchers, administrators and practitioners, and policymakers. The overarching research question guiding the hub is: How can intra- and inter-institutional partnerships be designed, built, and sustained to systematically support low-income engineering student success? Answering this question requires a research hub because understanding different models of organizational partnerships—and linking such research to student outcomes across a variety of institutional contexts—requires a focus across S-STEM programs that is only enabled by a research hub approach; it cannot happen in a single S-STEM program. An important contribution of this work will be to characterize aspects of problems in which collaboration and partnerships can be most helpful—supporting low-income engineering students aiming to earn a bachelor’s degree fits these conditions, representing the kind of complex system of interacting, interdependent stakeholders with differing expertise and with no systematic organization of stakeholders.
Hubbard, Aleata; Kao, Yvonne(
, SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)
Educators, researchers, politicians, tech companies, and others continue to advocate for the importance of K-12 students learning computer science in our increasingly tech-driven society. One way school districts in the United States address this growing demand is by allowing teachers certified in other disciplines to lead computer science courses. Summer and weekend professional development opportunities support these educators in developing the expertise needed for effective computer science teaching, but a great portion of their learning to teach computer science will occur through on-the-job experiences. Our four-year NSF EHR grant explores how a job-embedded professional development program that pairs high school teachers with tech industry professionals supports educators in acquiring computer science teaching knowledge. The research presented in this poster focuses on the third year of the study and includes (a) a theoretical component focused on creating a framework to explain on-the-job computer science teaching knowledge development based on case studies with six teachers, and (b) an empirical component focused on the creation and administration of a computer science teaching knowledge assessment. By the time of the SIGCSE symposium, we expect to have pre-test results from the first administration of our teaching knowledge assessment, completed by both high school teachers and their collaborating tech industry professionals. This poster will present our theoretical framework, resultant teaching knowledge assessment with sample items, and analysis of participants' assessment responses and their relationship to specific teaching experiences.
Project Connect (PC) is an immersive professional development program designed to increase the number of students from underrepresented groups in engineering who pursue careers in the microwave engineering and related fields. Most of the professionals in this area have been educated in the electrical engineering (EE) field with a focus on applied electromagnetics, antenna theory and communication systems. The electromagnetics class in a typical electrical engineering undergraduate program involves vector calculus and abstract concepts without, in many cases, the right facilities or equipment to aid experiential learning. This leaves most students perplexed and disinterested in the field, while they do not fully realize the wealth of opportunities that lie beyond this course. This problem is even more pronounced for students from underrepresented groups as they may have less exposure to the professional and academic opportunities in microwave engineering. Project Connect was birthed out of the need to keep these students engaged in the field by exposing them to a broader view of the field and the impact that they can have on technology.
Each year, the PC program is housed within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Microwave Symposium (IMS). IMS is the flagship conference of the Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT) Society and is based in North America. The typical attendance at the conference is over 9,000 and there is an associated industry exhibition with more than 700 companies. PC hosts approximately two dozen underrepresented students for four days of community building and professional development, most of whom are juniors or seniors in undergraduate programs, along with a smaller cohort of first-year students in graduate programs. The groups, consistently mixed in gender and ethnicity, get an opportunity for direct interaction with fellow PC participants, practitioners and academics, and leaders in the field and of the MTT society. This interaction is central to the success of the program, and the integration with IMS is representative of the important role that professional societies can play in diversifying STEM participation [1]. PC has been in operation since 2014 [2-5] and is sponsored jointly by the National Science Foundation and the IMS Organizing Committee.
Zou, Yixin, McDonald, Allison, Narakornpichit, Julia, Dell, Nicola, Ristenpart, Thomas, Roundy, Kevin, Schaub, Florian, and Tamersoy, Acar. The Role of Computer Security Customer Support in Helping Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10295032. USENIX Security Symposium .
Zou, Yixin, McDonald, Allison, Narakornpichit, Julia, Dell, Nicola, Ristenpart, Thomas, Roundy, Kevin, Schaub, Florian, and Tamersoy, Acar.
"The Role of Computer Security Customer Support in Helping Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence". USENIX Security Symposium (). Country unknown/Code not available. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10295032.
@article{osti_10295032,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {The Role of Computer Security Customer Support in Helping Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10295032},
abstractNote = {Technology plays an increasingly salient role in facilitating intimate partner violence (IPV). Customer support at computer security companies are receiving cases that involve tech-enabled IPV but might not be well equipped to handle these cases. To assess customer support’s existing practices and identify areas for improvement, we conducted five focus groups with professionals who work with IPV survivors (n=17). IPV professionals made numerous suggestions, such as using trauma-informed language, avoiding promises to solve problems, and making referrals to resources and support organizations. To evaluate the practicality of these suggestions, we conducted four focus groups with customer support practitioners (n=11). Support practitioners expressed interest in training agents for IPV cases, but mentioned challenges in identifying potential survivors and frontline agents’ limited capacity to help. We conclude with recommendations for computer security companies to better address tech-enabled IPV through training support agents, tracking the prevalence of these cases, and establishing partnerships with IPV advocates.},
journal = {USENIX Security Symposium},
author = {Zou, Yixin and McDonald, Allison and Narakornpichit, Julia and Dell, Nicola and Ristenpart, Thomas and Roundy, Kevin and Schaub, Florian and Tamersoy, Acar},
editor = {null}
}
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