MITIGATING DATA BREACHES BY IMPROVING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Abstract

These days, cybersecurity has gained implicit importance because the number of cybersecurity threats continues to increase. This is due to the rapid growth of using technology in all aspects of life. Dependency on such technology prompts users to provide their sensitive information in order to perform their work and achieve their needs. The digitalisation of data is resulting in an increase in the incidence of cybercrime. Data breaches are considered one of the most dangerous consequences of cybercrime. In previous studies, a wide range of countermeasures have been discussed. Notably, improving situational awareness has delivered positive results. To mitigate data breaches, we set a list of security requirements for organisations to meet as well as proposing a tool that is based on improving cyber situational awareness. Numerous requirements have been proposed for the tool but we implemented one function of these requirements which is reflecting the password situation. The current research applies a qualitative method and through experiments, we reflected on the password situation regarding GUI. We show that visualising the situation makes users more aware of what happens around them. Furthermore, our experiment results also show that visualising the situation using colour coding makes users categorise and understand situations.