Empirical study on the risky behavior and security awareness among secondary school pupils - validation and preliminary results

Some Correlates of Risky User Behavior and ICT Security Awareness of Secondary School Students

“…Also, those who think ICT is safe have low data security awareness and low proper data storage awareness. These results are in accordance with previous similar research establishing that various risky behaviors are mutually associated, as well as that there are different types of security awareness [2,4,16].…”

“…Results showed that girls are more aware of security and privacy risks; they think there is a greater chance someone will steal their data (t=2.658, p<0.01) and that computer system maintenance is more important (t=3.021, p<0.01), but they do not behave more carefully than boys. These results are in line with some previous research results revealing that there are some gender differences in terms of security awareness; adult female participants are more security aware than adult male participants [2,4].…”

“…Female students maintain computer systems more regularly than male students. However, there are no differences in risky user behavior regarding gender [4].…”

“…According to Livingstone and Bober [3], 44% of children (11-16 years old) unwillingly discovered pornographic content online, 28% of children received pornographic e-mail from someone, 27% of children accidentally ended up in a place promoting violence, 46% of children provided personal information to someone online, 72% of children would give personal information to win the quiz award, 36% of children share online communication with people they only met online, and 9% of children met face to face with someone who they met and communicated only online. Other researchers also showed that children and adolescents show the lowest level of ICT security awareness and are exposed to the greatest online security risks; compared to adults, more secondary school students disclose their e-mail addresses and passwords, borrow personal data, and consider certain activities on the Internet more secure [2,4]. There are some gender differences in security awareness, too; men believe that computer communication is safer, and women believe that there is a greater likelihood that someone will steal their personal information [2].…”

“…The second part of the questionnaire consisted of 16 questions measuring the level of users' information security knowledge and security awareness. In previous research, the UISAQ has proven to be a stable and valid measure of risky behavior and security awareness [2,4].…”