Smartphone owners need security advice. How can we ensure they get it?

摘要

Computer users often behave insecurely, and do not take the precautions they ought to. One readsalmost daily about people not protecting their devices, not making backups and falling forphishing messages. This impacts all of society since people increasingly carry a computer in theirpockets: their smartphones. It could be that smartphone owners simply do not know enough aboutsecurity threats or precautions. To address this, many official bodies publish advice online. Forsuch a broadcast-type educational approach to work, two assumptions must be satisfied. The firstis that people will deliberately seek out security-related information and the second is that theywill consult official sources to satisfy their information needs. Assumptions such as these ought tobe verified, especially with the numbers of cyber attacks on the rise.It was decided to explore the validity of these assumptions by surveying students at a SouthAfrican university, including both Computer Science and Non-Computer Science students. Theintention was to explore levels of awareness of Smartphone security practice, the sources ofadvice the students used, and the impact of a Computer Science education on awareness andinformation seeking behaviours. Awareness, it was found, was variable across the board butpoorer amongst students without a formal computing education. Moreover, it became clear thatstudents often found Facebook more helpful than public media, in terms of obtaining securityadvice.