Start with Identity
Researcher & Educator

M. Angela Sasse

Professor of Human-Centred Security · Ruhr University Bochum and University College London · 27+ years in identity
Focus areas
Usable SecuritySecurity EconomicsHuman FactorsPassword Behaviour
Notable work
  • Co-authored Users Are Not the Enemy (1999) with Anne Adams
  • Founded human-centred security as a research field
  • Long-running work on the hidden organizational cost of security controls

Bio

M. Angela Sasse co-authored "Users Are Not the Enemy" with Anne Adams in 1999, at University College London, and built human-centred security into a research field. The paper showed that password workarounds, reuse, writing credentials down, sharing them, are produced by the policy rather than by careless people.

Profile built from public academic and publication records.

Where their work shows up

Every argument for passkeys, for dropping forced rotation, and for treating a help-desk reset queue as a security signal rather than an operational cost traces to this line of work. It also reframed what a control costs: if a policy generates ten thousand workarounds, the workarounds are the real system. See help desk social engineering, password spraying, and what is passwordless.

Built from public information only. This is an independent profile and is not an endorsement by, or affiliation with, the person listed. Corrections: [email protected].