Privacy Risk of Personal Information Exposure

Customers’ individual private information are collected to gain valuable information. Through business analytics companies gain competitive advantage in making decisions. However, some irresponsible companies sell customer’s data to third party for illegal activities. This caused distrust and lack of confidence among consumers in revealing their private information. Due to customer reluctant in disclosing their information, this may hinder the growth of e-commerce. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate consumer sensitivity towards data privacy. This research adopted a research framework based on ‘Concern for Information Privacy’ (CFIP) dimensions to further conducted the study. This study has tested relationship using five independent variables. A total number 384 data were collected from respondents using questionnaire. Regression was employed to analyse the relationship between identified variables. Result found that collection, unauthorized secondary internal use, unauthorized secondary external use, improper access and errors have a positive influence on consumer sensitivity towards data privacy. Furthermore, the effects of unauthorized secondary internal use on consumer sensitivity towards data privacy is found to be significantly greater

The students’ perceived use, ease of use and enjoyment of educational games at home and at school

Relevant literature suggests that today’s children possess digital skills and competences that set them apart from the previous generations. This may be due to their continuous exposure to ubiquitous media and digital games. Therefore, this research uses valid measures from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Theory of Planned Behavior, and from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to investigate the primary school students’ attitudes and normative pressures toward playing educational games, at home and at school. The study was carried out amongst year-3 students in a small European state. The findings reported that there were strong correlations between the students’ attitudes and their intention to play the school's games. The respondents indicated that they considered the educational games as useful and relevant for their learning. However, the results have shown that there was no significant relationship between the perceived ease of gameplay and the children’s enjoyment in engaging with the school’s digital games. These findings are consistent with the extant academic literature on the digital natives. To the best of our knowledge, there is no other study in academia that has explored the technology acceptance of digital games in primary education. Therefore, this contribution opens future research avenues as this study can be replicated in other contexts.University of Malta, Malta and Ministry of Education and Employment, Malta.peer-reviewe

Understanding and predicting teachers’ intention to use cloud computing in smart education

Purpose Applying cloud computing (CC) in education is a great opportunity to globalize knowledge with the minimum costs and maximum accessibility. This study aims to understand and predict teacher intention to use cloud commuting as infrastructure in Smart education. Design/methodology/approach This was a cross-sectional study in which faculty members’ perception concerning CC services adoption in education were assessed based on the extended model of theory of planned behavior, by researcher-developed questionnaire (a = 0.9). Collected data were analyzed by regression analysis and the final model was tested by structural equation modeling. Findings Attitude towards the behavior, perceived behavior control and privacy; had direct and significant associations with faculty members’ intention to use CC. However, subjective norms (p = 0.311) and security (p = 0.505 ) were not significant predictors of intention to use CC. Originality/value The results of this study elucidate the critical factors associated with teacher’s behavioral intentions toward CC services and also serve as a valuable reference for education sector to plan for the better use of these services. The presented model can be considered as best practice framework for adapting cloud commuting as infrastructure in education. Applying CC services in education is great opportunity and should be subsequently the major concern of educational organizations. This study clearly identified significant and non-significant factors that should be considered when successful implementation on could computing services is in progress

Anxiety about Digital Security and Terrorism and Support for Counter-terror Measures

Purpose: This paper aims to determine the potential predictors of anxiety about digital security, terrorist threats and support for high-tech counter measures. Design/methodology/approach: In Study 1, 195 participants indicated their anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites. In Study 2, 107 participants indicated their anxiety about domestic terrorism, international terrorism and extremist groups. In Study 3, 261 participants indicated their support for high-tech counter terrorism measures. Findings: Study 1 suggests that whereas anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites were positively predicted by right-wing authoritarianism, anxiety about social networking was also negatively predicted by time spent online. Study 2 shows that time spent online was a negative predictor of anxiety about domestic terrorism. Study 3 indicates that the strongest positive predictor of support for all the measures was right-wing authoritarianism, followed by national identity. Research implications: The findings show the relevance of terror management theory to digital security and counter-terrorism. Practical implications: It appears that right-wing authoritarianism and national identity may serve as mechanisms for people to subjectively counter the presented threats. This notion may inform relevant policy and practice aimed at making communities safer and potentially help introduce counter-terror measures with less public backlash. Social implications: When designing counter-terror measures, policy makers should consider compound national identities (e.g., Catalan or Basque people). Originality/Value: The paper makes contribution to underexplored areas of terrorism anxiety and support for counter-terror measures

Why Do Users Continue to Use Mobile Cloud Computing Applications? A Security-Privacy

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) apps are mobile apps that use cloud computing technology to provide larger storage capacity and simultaneous access from different mobile devices. Despite the benefits, sending data to the cloud raises security and privacy concerns as mobile users do not have direct control over their data in the cloud. Further, many MCC apps are not used just after single use. In this study, we do a cost/benefit analysis based on security and privacy to investigate the factors that drive or inhibit mobile users to continue to use MCC apps. Additionally, we examine whether security and privacy interventions of MCC apps providers influence the cost/benefit analysis. The results of the survey with 412 MCC apps users show that while security concerns inhibit, privacy concerns do not stop using MCC apps. The value of MCC apps is the main enabler followed by trust to continue to use the apps. The results also show that security and privacy interventions do not add value to MCC apps, but they increase trust. These interventions decrease privacy concerns but have no effect on security concerns. Finally, these interventions indirectly drive users to continue to use the apps through trust

Security and Privacy of Personal Health Records in Cloud Computing Environments – An Experimental Exploration of the Impact of Storage Solutions and Data Breaches

In the course of the digitization in healthcare, the collection and central storage of large health-related datasets in clouds in the form of personal health records is growing. However, the use of cloud services for sensitive data is associated with security and privacy risks. Further, the delegation of control over security and privacy measures to the cloud provider requires trust on the users’ side. In order to investigate the role of security and privacy when storing and processing patient data, we conducted an online experiment, in which third-party cloud services are compared to private on-premise data centers. Additionally, we examine the impact of data breaches on the perceived security, privacy, control and trust in both storage scenarios. Our results indicate that cloud-based personal health records still face concerns regarding perceived security, privacy, control and trust amongst end-users. Nevertheless, after a data breach, no significant differences between both solutions exist

An Empirical Study of Switching Behavior toward Cloud Storage Services

With the rapid development of cloud storage, it is necessary to determine the mechanism of cloud storage adoption. Based on social exchange theory, technology acceptance model and perceived risk theory, this study attempts to explore the switching factors and to empirically examine the relationship between those and users’ intention to switch to cloud storage services. This study quantitatively analyzes the data to obtain the significance level of each variable and a model of the influence mechanism of cloud storage switching intention is obtained. Our main results suggest that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have a significantly positive impact on related benefits. Information loss risk and time risk have a significantly positive impact on related costs while information leakage risk does not influence significantly. Related benefits have a significant positive impact on switching intention while related costs have a significantly negative impact on it

Compliance of MOOCs and OERs with the new privacy and security EU regulations

[EN] Since their appearance in the early 2000s, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Open Educational Resources (OERs) arose among the most important educational priorities. Many top universities worldwide have been involved in the research and direct implementation of this innovative pedagogical approach. Simultaneously with the development and massive deployment of the new learning and teaching method, European regulations responsible for data privacy and protection, and information security have significantly evolved. This paper assesses the compliance of the ten most popular MOOCs and OERs with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Directive on security of network and information systems (NIS Directive). In order to systematically examine their online platforms, a few privacy indicators were outlined and thoroughly observed. Alongside this, the involvement of the open education providers in the NIS Directive was examined. Research findings are presented and elaborated in a way that it makes easy to generate recommendations on how to anticipate the future of open education as a reasonable reaction to global change in the era of rapid technological growth, and at the same time to obey the crucial ethical principles defined by this development.Zdravkova, K. (2019). Compliance of MOOCs and OERs with the new privacy and security EU regulations. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 159-167. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9063OCS15916