\u201cAs you develop these things, you’re a victim of your own development speed,\u201d says Fadell, who developed Ledger Stax, a signing device for securing digital assets, and is now a board member at digital asset security firm Ledger. \u201cIf you introduced these features and functions without the proper review, and now customers are demanding security, you’ll realize that you should have designed it differently from the start, and it’s very hard to undo what you’ve already done.\u201d<\/p>\n A critical aspect of designing secure technology, however, must be ease of use too. Without it, it is all too simple for users to make a mistake or use an unsafe workaround that undermines device protections. Think a post-it stuck to a monitor or some variation of “123456” or “admin” for passwords.<\/p>\n With digital asset security devices like signers\u2014more commonly called “wallets”\u2014such errors could lead to seriously detrimental outcomes. If, for example, a user\u2019s private key falls into the wrong hands, bad actors can use it to steal their digital assets. Estimates suggest that around 20% of all Bitcoin\u2014worth around $355 billion\u2014are inaccessible to owners. One of the reasons for this is likely because they lost their private keys.<\/p>\n In the past, crypto devices have been notoriously difficult to use. As cryptocurrency becomes ever more popular, valuable, and mainstream\u2014attracting greater attention from criminals as the stakes rise\u2014designers and engineers are prioritizing both security and usability when developing digital asset devices, drawing on in-depth research to iterate.<\/p>\n Strong security models for devices like signers, which are used to secure blockchain transactions,\u00a0 require three major components. First, a secure operating system. Second, a secure element to bind the software to the hardware. And third, a secure user interface. Each of which need to be frequently tested by researchers and white hat hackers to simulate real-world attacks and improve product resilience and usability.<\/p>\n The first two elements focus on securing the device software and hardware. Secure software has always been a problem, but one that has improved over the last decade, as security architectures and processes have been refined. Meanwhile, hardware security components have become widely available\u2014from trusted platform modules on computers to secure enclaves in smartphones\u2014allowing digital information to essentially be locked to a device.<\/p>\n For crypto signers, hardware must provide encryption capabilities. And the security of the software must be frequently tested. Ledger, for example, has a secure OS and a Secure Element that handles encryption primitives, and a secure display that prevents device takeover.<\/p>\n Asset recovery is a major consideration when designing signers. If recovery options are not easy to use, an owner could lose access. But if recovery processes are not secure enough, attackers could exploit the system. With SIM swapping attacks, for example, attackers can tap into a mobile communications channel used for account recovery and “recover” a victim’s password to steal their assets.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #usability #imperative #securing #digital #asset #devices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cAs you develop these things, you’re a victim of your own development speed,\u201d says Fadell,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2747,1679,1025,2745,2746,2744],"class_list":["post-2916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-asset","tag-devices","tag-digital","tag-imperative","tag-securing","tag-usability"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/X2A9908-1-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/X2A9908.jpg?w=3000\")
<\/figure>\nThe three components of security<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Security and usability working hand in hand<\/strong><\/h3>\n