PETs4SMEs

Supporting and Enabling Effective Privacy Decision Making for SMEs

Maria Bada (Queen Mary University London), Steven Furnell (University of Nottingham), Jason Nurse (University of Kent)

This 12-month interdisciplinary project will investigate current practices in relation to the drivers and unique obstacles that SMEs face, in making privacy-aware decisions. This work seeks to address three key research challenges: 1) The lack of a wider research and practitioner understanding around to the extent to which SMEs understand and use Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs); 2) Identifying how best such a user group could be supported to become intelligent users of PETs, given their particular constraints; 3) Enabling effective communication and engagement with SMEs. The core of our proposed approach is the design and development of an SME Privacy Starter Pack (SPSP).