Gj�vik University College

MSc thesis: User awareness and adoption of preventive technology

The thesis is written in affiliation with a project by the Norwegian Centre of Computing. The overall goal for the project is to enable communicating organisations to include privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in large-scale web-based services for the general public and customers.

The case study in the project is the Mypage.no portal that was launched 1.1.2007. The portal is to be a single-sign on solution for most governmental services to the public. A new security solution is to be designed and this project will do the initial investigations into what requirements such a security solution will need to meet.

The Mypage.no portal aggregates a lot of personal data. The accessing of this data by end users, will place the information on the users computer. This will make the information vulnerable against attacks to the user computer, not only at the service providers and in transit.

Are the users aware of threats to their computers and do they have the knowledge and the will to do the necessary to protect themselves?

The first main goal of my thesis is to investigate if the results in the threat awareness studies performed in e.g. the US is applicable to the Norwegian population too.

The second main goal is to see if we can find indications of a threshold in awareness where people start using preventive technologies such as anti-virus, firewalls and anti-spyware.