Google & Dropbox announce 'Simply Secure' project to make security tech more user-friendly

Today Dropbox and Google announced the creation of Simply Secure, an organization that aims to make security tech, like two-factor authentication, easier to use.

The organization hasn’t built any products yet. It’s just getting the hiring process started.

According to the project’s joint press release, “consumer-facing security tools exist and are technically effective, [but] they often have low adoption rates because they’re inconvenient or too confusing for the average person to operate.” Only Dropbox’s contact details are listed at the foot of the release, suggesting that this may not be an equal partnership. However, the director of Simply Secure, Sara Sinclair Brody, previously worked as a project manager at Google.

As for why the project’s been started, the release names “the recent celebrity photo leak and the Snowden revelations” as two catalysts. Funnily enough, both Google and Dropbox were named as participants in the National Security Agency’s PRISM program. And Dropbox has been criticized for electing former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to its board. As we’ve said before, Rice’s public support of warrantless wiretaps is central to this controversy.

In addition to Dropbox and Google, the Open Technology Fund, University College London, and World Wide Web Consortium are also involved in the new organization, according to the official release.

“Simply Secure will bring some of the best minds in security, user interaction research, and design together to dedicate resources and brainpower to solving this problem,” the press release claims.

Getting consumers to adopt better security features like two factor authentication is a problem many software companies face. People just don’t want to inconvenience themselves by adding another step to the login process. This partnership seeks to create new open source security products and establish new methods that optimize usability, so users don’t have to choose between the two.

Often when companies focus on user experience, security suffers — something this new organization will have to be careful of.