cff-version: 1.2.0 abstract: "
This dataset contains the summary of demographic information, anonymized semi-structured interview transcripts, and drawings resulting from our study on mental models or VPN technology among experts and non-experts in a professional service firm in the Netherlands. The interviews were conducted in June and July 2020. We conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven experts and seven non-experts. We also asked our participants to complete a drawing exercise to help participants to think aloud about how the VPN is organized and functions. Five interviews were conducted in English, and thirteen were in Dutch.

The interview questions were focused on the following topics:
1) What a VPN is?
2) For what purpose a VPN is used?
3) What the technical infrastructure of a VPN looks like?
3) What the security benefits and/or risks of using a VPN are?
4) What changes occur in the threat landscape when using a VPN?
5) What the impact of a possible attack could be when using a VPN.

This research project was reviewed and approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Delft University of Technology (reference number: 55223).
" authors: - family-names: Binkhorst given-names: Veroniek - family-names: Fiebig given-names: Tobias - family-names: Krombholz given-names: Katharina - family-names: Pieters given-names: Wolter - family-names: Labunets given-names: Kate orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0884-2440" title: "Data underlying the research of VPN Mental Models Among Experts and Non-Experts in a Corporate Context" keywords: version: 1 identifiers: - type: doi value: 10.4121/17118491.v1 license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 date-released: 2021-12-07