Towards the design of pre questionnaires to promote information privacy protection awareness

Abstract

The number of victims of cyber-attacks escalates daily as cyber criminals become more sophisticated in their attack methods. Many organizations have well developed information privacy protection mechanisms in place but there are still many organizations that fail to proactively prepare themselves in terms of a rigid organizational information privacy protection program. The same applies for individuals who lack the required knowledge to proactively protect their personal information from being compromised and therefore fall victims to data breaches. For organizations, a data breach can cost the organization millions in terms of recovery expenses and operational interruptions and can cause serious reputational damage to individuals.The objective of this study is to use an honors project presented by the School of Computing at the University of South Africa (UNISA) to promote information privacy protection awareness. This is by means of creating a pre questionnaire for different contexts for organizations and individuals to elicit their current level of understanding regarding information privacy protection awareness. This will serve as a preliminary step for the development of an artefact to promote information privacy protection awareness and the subsequent evaluation of the artefact by means of a post questionnaire. The creation of pre questionnaires will also serve as guidance to students who experience difficulties in their literature review and identifying a suitable context for their study.