Smartphone security: understanding smartphone users' trust in information security management

摘要

Owing to the rapid advancement of technologies, today's mobile phones (e. g., smartphones) can not only fulfill users' basic requirements for communication purposes but also serve as powerful pervasive devices with various valuable functions for users. With wide and close Internet accessibility, smartphones nowadays inevitably suffer security threats and information security management (ISM) issues like common computers do. In this research, information security related trust issues are investigated through a user-based empirical study. Our research project aims to study the relationships between smartphone users' computer literacy, network literacy, knowledge on mobile phone viruses, and trust in ISM principles (i.e., confidentiality, integrity, and availability). The study results indicate that smartphone users' network literacy positively influence their knowledge on mobile phone viruses, whereas users' computer literacy is not significantly associated with their knowledge on mobile phone viruses. Moreover, smartphone users' knowledge on mobile phone viruses would significantly affect their trusts in three ISM principles. The validated research model and corresponding findings can be referenced by business executives and ISM decision makers in electronic commerce (e-commerce) for making favorable tactics to catch the revolutionary benefits offered by effective ISM policies in the ubiquitous computing environment. Copyright (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.