Foresight Institute Announces 2025 Norm Hardy Prize Winners for Advances in Usable Security
Foresight Institute is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Norm Hardy Prize: Dr. Pardis Emami-Naeini, Dr. Lorrie Faith Cranor, and Dr. Yuvraj Agarwal, for their contributions to advancing usable security through the development of a layered cybersecurity label for smart home devices.
In an age where reliable computer security is critical, the Norm Hardy Prize celebrates significant contributions to the field of usable security. It builds upon the vision of the late computer scientist Norm Hardy, best known for identifying the confused deputy vulnerability. Hardy underscored the necessity of building inherently secure systems, complemented by interaction designs that enable users to operate these systems securely and intuitively.
Dr. Emami-Naeini, Dr. Cranor, and Dr. Agarwal are recognized for their research empowering consumers to make more secure choices through clear, accessible security information. Their work on a layered cybersecurity label for smart home devices has helped shape national policy and industry standards, including the new U.S. Cyber Trust Mark.
About the winning work
Consumers increasingly purchase smart home devices without understanding how their data is managed or protected. The award-winning research demonstrated that when security and privacy information is presented clearly and accessibly, people make more secure choices.
With input from experts and consumers, the team developed a layered, easy-to-read cybersecurity label highlighting key protections such as security updates, authentication, and data-handling practices. This work directly informed national policy and industry standards, including the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a new labeling initiative for connected devices.
Dr. Pardis Emami-Naeini is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Duke University and a Duke Science and Technology Scholar. Her research focuses on developing usable privacy and security solutions that empower individuals from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds to engage in safer, more informed interactions with technology. Her work has been featured by several media outlets, such as Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and has influenced key organizations, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Consumer Reports, and the World Economic Forum, in creating usable and informative security and privacy labels for smart devices. Dr. Emami-Naeini earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2020. She received the 2024 Google Research Scholar Award and has been recognized as a Rising Star in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (2019) and a CMU CyLab Presidential Fellow (2019–2020).
Lorrie Faith Cranor
Carnegie Mellon University
Lorrie Faith Cranor is Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute and FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She directs the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) and co-directs the Privacy Engineering program. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission. She co-founded Wombat Security Technologies. She is a fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS; a member of the ACM CHI Academy; and the author of a children’s book about privacy.
Yuvraj Agarwal
Carnegie Mellon University
Yuvraj Agarwal is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, and the director of SynergyLabs @ CMU. He is affiliated with the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D), the Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), and ECE (by courtesy) at CMU. His lab focuses on research at the intersection of hardware and software systems, and in the recent past his group has focused on energy efficiency, security and privacy as a central research theme. In additional to publications at competitive conferences (MobiSys, Ubicomp, SenSys, IPSN, NSDI, USENIX, Oakland, BuildSys, CHI), SynergyLab specifically strives to build and deploy systems that have real world impact and benefit society. His group leads research
around smart buildings, systems for the Internet-of-Things (IoT), privacy and security, and have also had significant impact in mobile computing and energy efficient computing. Several of the systems that Yuvraj and his students have built have been deployed at scale on the UCSD and CMU campuses. The systems that he has built for studying privacy on mobile platforms have been used by hundreds of thousands of users and have had significant industrial impact. Yuvraj is a member of the IEEE, ACM and USENIX.
About Norm Hardy
Norm Hardy’s most significant contribution to the field of usable security was KeyKOS, a capability-secure operating system that ran on commodity hardware, as well as creating core parts of capability-secure languages and protocols. Hardy underscored the necessity of building inherently secure systems complemented by interaction designs that enable users to operate these systems securely and intuitively.
More information about the Norm Hardy Prize and previous winner
About Foresight Institute
Foresight Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing beneficial, high-impact technologies. Since 1986, it has focused on fields often neglected by traditional institutions – including nanotechnology, neurotechnology, safe AI, longevity, and space. Its global community includes Nobel laureates, pioneering technologists, investors, builders, and leading academics, all working to accelerate breakthroughs that expand human potential.
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