Principal Investigator:

Prem chander Boinapally

Study:

Adult and Continuing Education and Teaching

a. Full name:

Prem chander Boinapally

b. University department, program, and position:

Education/Student

c. Email address:

[email protected]

d. Phone number:

510-556-7011

a. Full name:

b. University department, program, and position:

c. Email address:

d. Phone number:

a. Full name:

b. Email address:

c. Phone number:

a. Full name:

Dr. Olabisi Adenekan

b. Email address:

[email protected]

c. Phone number:

f.

Yes

X

No

Exempt – no human subjects involved

X

Expedite – minimal risk to human subjects

Full Review – moderate to high risk to human subjects

Internal – research intended for teaching purposes only within courses at Judson University.

X

Public – research may be published outside of Judson University.

Cyber Security

Our dependency on the internet has become immense. It is wrong to assume one’s safety in the sense that only big organizations are more susceptible to hackers. A normal consumer connected to the internet if not vigilant enough is at the risk of getting trapped easily. Cyber infiltrators have developed many ways of hacking into systems. In this day and era, cyber security helps maintain order, and keep the internet safe for users. The current digital era has influenced change in the ways we buy things, bills get paid, watch movies, how people pay mortgages and rent houses just to mention but a few. Incidents of security breaches are widely reported as well as fraud, malicious cyber-attacks, fraud, hacking, cyber-bullying making it necessary for the need of cyber security.

This research will use the qualitative research method. Data will be collected and analyzed. Non-numerical data will be used to help gather deeper insights into the problem to help generate new ideas. The intention is to investigate cyber security and find out possible measures put in place to be secure against threats, investigate the measures organization put in place and adopt for safety, and to find out what measures individuals and organizations should take to protect themselves. Subjects will be chosen base on the research need rather than convenience. Participants were selected based on searches on the web through posting on social media of the survey targeted towards victims of cyber-attacks. Blogs and posts aimed were p for victims of cyber attacks were published inviting them for the survey.

Victims for the survey will qualify on merit that they received a malicious malware either through a trojan or an executable file performing an action on the victim’s machine or on the network. The method by which the attacker sent the malware will also be considered either by e-mail, as an attachment or as a link that will download the payload. Another factor will be to consider what exploitation the victim faced and where the attacker needs the aim of the victim. Further we will question whether the victims installation of the malware was successful and if the victim did execute it automatically and whether the attacker achieved his objectives where there was loss of data from the database through the web server.

This study will take place between February and July 2022.

General logistics; survey distribution, identifying participants will take place between February and March 2022.

Focus group meeting will be done between April and May 2022.

Transcription and coding will be done between April and July 2022.

The data to be collected will be collected from the following geographical areas:

· Washington D.C area location.

· Colorado Springs area location.

· Albuquerque area location.

· New York area location

The participants for this study will be adults of 18 years and above and categorized as either an expert or a victim.

The involvement selection process will be based on availability and willingness of the participants.

A follow up survey will be conducted to people available and willing to participate in the research.

Participant for this research study will be drawn from the mentioned geographical place above. Washington D.C will get higher popularity than the rest. Participants will be of mixed ages and gender. Participants who are victims take precedence as they provide insights of value to the research topic. For easier communication, participants will be able to converse in English. Participants will be of 5-7 participants who will be categorized by the geographical region they are in.

The research will be open to all adults except adults with mental dis-abilities. Adults with physical dis-abilities are eligible for the research. Most people with this disability are restricted in carrying out activity such as self-care, mobility or communication which present as an obstacle for the research. A test will be administered in order to filter out people with short attention spans, poor reading writing and communication ability, disorganization and other sensory difficulties, eye-hand coordination problems and poor coordination overall, difficulty with sequencing, and lastly poor memory.

When interviewing the victims, I’ll make sure they are in a safe space physically and psychologically to talk about how cyber security breach affected them.

Any information given by participants is confidential and he or she won’t be exposed. Both during and after research anonymity is paramount and will be guaranteed. Hard copies and electronic ways will be used to store data. The audios will be transcribed by the researcher and the hard copies locked away in the cabinet. Only the research team will have access.

Any participating adult will be asked to sign a consent form before the commencement of a survey.

No Risk: 2 Minimum Risk: 4 Moderate Risk: 6 High Risk: 2