2 research outputs found
Smartphone owners need security advice. How can we ensure they get it?
Computer users often behave insecurely, and do not take the precautions they ought to. One reads
almost daily about people not protecting their devices, not making backups and falling for
phishing messages. This impacts all of society since people increasingly carry a computer in their
pockets: their smartphones. It could be that smartphone owners simply do not know enough about
security threats or precautions. To address this, many official bodies publish advice online. For
such a broadcast-type educational approach to work, two assumptions must be satisfied. The first
is that people will deliberately seek out security-related information and the second is that they
will consult official sources to satisfy their information needs. Assumptions such as these ought to
be 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 South
African university, including both Computer Science and Non-Computer Science students. The
intention was to explore levels of awareness of Smartphone security practice, the sources of
advice the students used, and the impact of a Computer Science education on awareness and
information seeking behaviours. Awareness, it was found, was variable across the board but
poorer amongst students without a formal computing education. Moreover, it became clear that
students often found Facebook more helpful than public media, in terms of obtaining security
advice
Why Do People Adopt, or Reject, Smartphone Password Managers?
People use weak passwords for a variety of reasons, the most prescient of these being memory load and inconvenience. The motivation to choose weak passwords is even more compelling on Smartphones because entering complex passwords is particularly time consuming and arduous on small devices. Many of the memory- and inconvenience-related issues can be ameliorated by using a password manager app. Such an app can generate, remember and automatically supply passwords to websites and other apps on the phone. Given this potential, it is unfortunate that these applications have not enjoyed widespread adoption. We carried out a study to find out why this was so, to investigate factors that impeded or encouraged password manager adoption. We found that a number of factors mediated during all three phases of adoption: searching, deciding and trialling. The study’s findings will help us to market these tools more effectively in order to encourage future adoption of password managers