Improving protection and security awareness amongst home users |
With increased protection making businesses a much harder target, home users are now becoming targeted more significantly. In the past home users have been somewhat neglected and only in recent years have a few surveys emerged to provide some insight into their level of protection.
Bryant P, Furnell SM, Phippen AD
This paper reports findings from a survey of 415 home users, examining their knowledge of security issues and the usage and protection of their computer systems. It revealed that while users are generally confident about their security and feel they have heightened awareness about the main threats, protection measures such as firewalls and anti virus are not updated regularly enough to provide sufficient protection. There is also a lack of awareness about phishing threats, and insufficient protection against more recent threats such as spyware. This may have worrying implications for the future, with rising uptake and consequently threats from Instant Messenger and Voice Over IP applications and technologies.