Human Centered Methods to Communicate Security & Privacy Critical Information in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is becoming more affordable and will soon become ubiquitous within society.
However, currently the technology is not there yet, as virtual reality can pose security and privacy
risks to a user which they may not be aware of. Such as, unencrypted communications of sensitive
information, unconsented data collection or even the virtual reality headset being used to view the
devices' surroundings, which could lead to disclosing confidential information or even blackmail.
We have yet to provide methods to communicate to a user within virtual reality, when their data
is being collected or if a security vulnerability is present. This project aims to preserve a users'
cyber security and privacy when using virtual reality. This will be achieved by taking advantage of
the capabilities seen within virtual reality to develop novel methods of identifying threats and
communicating security and privacy information to a user. This work will contribute to creating an
environment that supports virtual reality users to inform and more importantly, provide knowledge
to protect themselves from security vulnerabilities and data that is being collected potentially
without the users' prior knowledge or consent.