Design and Implementation of a Secure and Anonymous Web – Based Incident Reporting System for Protecting Personally Identifiable Information

As digital incident reporting systems gain traction, concerns have emerged over the protection of PII in environments where privacy, confidentiality, and user anonymity are vital. Existing web-based IRS often rely on a trusted central authority and inadequate security controls, leaving sensitive incident information vulnerable to eavesdropping, unauthorized disclosure, and user identification. Such shortcomings hinder prompt and honest reporting, particularly in cybersecurity and organizational settings where retaliation concerns remain. In this study, we describe the design and implementation of a secure and anonymous web-based incident reporting system that focuses on safeguarding user PII using privacy-by-design principles. The system uses E2EE to keep incident data secure from reporting to analysis. The system employs a hybrid cryptographic scheme using RSA to securely exchange keys, AES for data encryption, and SHA-256 hashing to irreversibly protect critical identifiers. Authentication and access control features are incorporated to prevent data leakage while ensuring user anonymity. The key innovation in this research is a secure, modular system design that integrates contemporary web technologies with cryptographic mechanisms to improve trust, confidentiality, and compliance. A preliminary security assessment is performed to confirm the security of the proposed design against network-based security threats, demonstrating that it is suitable for privacy-sensitive incident reporting systems