Vivian Motti, Assistant Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, received funding from Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority for the project: "Human-Centric Training for Privacy and Security Controls: Bridging the Awareness Gap for Diverse Populations."
She is collaborating with Ahmad Salman, an Assistant Professor in the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University, and Samy El-Tawab, an Associate Professor in the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University.
Motti has three main objectives for this project:
1. To characterize the level of awareness of older adults about technology risks (privacy).
2. To develop educational materials and training to address the unmet needs of this population through co-design sessions.
3. To evaluate the impact of the training on knowledge acquisition and risk prevention.
Once the objectives are met, Motti and her collaborators will release the materials created to facilitate knowledge transfer and disseminate the results to community members, including older adults, educators, and researchers.
Motti and her collaborators expect outcomes from this project to include: a formal characterization of the current cybersecurity awareness of this user population, best practices and guidelines for developing educational materials, and the impact of the interventions on knowledge acquisition. They will measure the outcomes using a validated questionnaire for assessment. They will gauge the broader impact of the project by the number of accesses and downloads of the materials released.
Regarding the importance of this project, Motti said, "Although extensive effort has been placed on making information systems more secure, little emphasis has been put on understanding human behavior and how it affects the privacy and security of users' information and smart devices. Even when user studies are conducted in this domain, they involve users whose profile does not represent properly a variety of users. Therefore, to bridge this gap, in the research activities proposed in this project we will involve diverse users front and center in our research agenda. Our goal is to better understand how such users interact with smart devices, unveiling their intentions, needs, and wishes."
Motti said, further, "Then, we will advance the design and development of privacy controls for smart devices. Specifically, we will develop training materials that are intuitive for diverse users to understand. We expect that such training materials will improve knowledge acquisition as well as behavior change. Ultimately, end users will regain control over their privacy by setting their devices and systems to actually meet their individual needs."
Motti received $40,000 from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority for this project. Funding began in January 2022 and will end in late December 2022.
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