changes to dissertation

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 based on the research need rather than convenience. Participants will be selected based on searches on the web through posting on social media of the survey targeted towards experts of cyber-attacks. Blogs and posts aimed will be at experts of cyber attacks and they will be published inviting them for the survey.

Experts for the survey will qualify on merit that they received malicious malware either through a trojan or an executable file acting on the machine or 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 expert faced and where the attacker needs the aim of the expert. Further, we will be questioning whether the expert’s installation of the malware was successful and if they did execute it automatically and whether the attacker achieved his objectives where there was a loss of data from the database through the webserver.

Experts will have had to have had a working experience of five or more years in the cyber security field of study. The data company experts will be most preferred as they have daily exposure to the subject matter at hand.

Focus group participants: Focus group meetings will be held especially for face-to-face surveys. The focus will provide helpful insights into the research as there are multiple interactions, not only between the interviewee and participants but among the participants themselves. Two rounds of focus group meetings will be conducted with different groups. Data from network administrators are also reported. During the first focus group meeting, participants will know the different ways hackers get access to their networks and the different types of malware. For the second focus group, we will give data analysis of the first group and try to reach a consensus on the most important deviations of the security rules. The focus that will be conducted over the phone will consist of 5-7 members and last about one and a half hours. The focus groups will be audiotaped and the audiotapes transcribed into anonymized text files.

Analysis: The analysis of qualitative data is an iterative process. The coding of data comes first to determine major categories fit into different categories. interpreting qualitative data is highly subjective and procedures have to be developed to establish inter reliability. Two coders will be used to code the data. They will agree on different categories and reach a consensus on how the data will be fitted into the main categories. After consensus, their solutions, and the data on which they will base, will be presented to another researcher. Based on the feedback of the other researcher changes will be made to how the data fit into the main categories. The same process will continue and only after the three researchers came to a consensus about the right interpretation of the qualitative data, the solutions will be accepted.

Participation requirement: Subjects will be asked to provide honest information for the survey. Participants will answer questions and provide insight on different questions asked. All participants will converse in English and will sign consent forms before the start of the survey.

Group Component: groups will have 6-7 members brought together by a common characteristic.

Meeting Preparation: Participants will be notified through emails of relevant information about meetings especially. The participants will meet in any available community spaces conducive to such gatherings. Meeting rooms, churches, classrooms, public libraries are good meeting places.

Working logistics: each focus group member will determine accordingly to responses from the survey logistics. After meeting for one and a half hours, for two meetings, each group will be discontinued.

Focus Group Meetings: A sign sheet will be provided for each meeting day to allow for the documentation of participants present. Name tags will be given for easy identification. Relevant information will be communicated while making sure that the participants agree with the confidentiality agreement. The researcher will be the moderator and will take notes during the meeting. Different meetings will have different agendas.

This study will take place between July and December 2022.

General logistics; survey distribution, identifying participants will take place between August and September 2022.

Focus group meetings will be done between October and November 2022.

Transcription and coding will be done between October and December 2022.

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

· Washington D.C area location.

· Colorado Springs area location.

The participants for this study will be adults of 21 years and above and categorized as experts.

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

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

Participants for this research study will be drawn from the mentioned geographical place above. Washington D.C will get higher popularity than Colorado Springs. Participants will be of mixed ages and gender. Participants who are experts will 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 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 disabilities. Adults with physical disabilities are eligible for the research. Most people with this disability are restricted in carrying out an activity such as self-care, mobility, or communication which presents an obstacle for the research. A test will be administered 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 experts, I'll make sure they are in a safe space physically and psychologically to talk about how cyber security breaches affected them.

Any information given by participants is confidential and he or they won't be exposed. Both during and after research anonymity will be 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