Security researchers, Dropbox, Google, and the Open Technology Fund today announced Simply Secure, a new organization focused on making open source security tools easier to use. The organization will try to bring some of the best minds in security, user interaction research and design together to dedicate resources and brainpower to make open-source security tools more accessible and easier to understand.

Led by Director Sara Sinclair Brody, the organization will work with the open source community to develop tools that make it easy for people without advanced technical knowledge to choose better security .

"Simply Secure represents an exciting opportunity to bring together diverse groups in pursuit of an important goal: making security and privacy tools more user-friendly. This transparent, community-focused approach is new, and represents a compelling adaptation of the open-source model to interaction design. Usable security has been a passion of mine for the past ten years, and I'm thrilled to be leading such a wide-ranging and well-supported initiative." Sara Sinclair Brody, Director of Simply Secure.

The organization will researchand develop usability and security auditing practices. It will sponsor usability studies for major secure-communications tools, and work with designers and developers to act on their findings.

A primary focus will be on technology that secures communication on top of existing platforms and services. For instance, the organization will try to encrypt on top of popular name-brand, consumer-facing cloud services.