Cybersecurity knowledge is lacking among consumers, according to survey results recently published by the Pew Research Center.
“[M]any Americans are unclear about some key cybersecurity topics, terms and concepts,” according to an article by Pew detailing the survey’s findings. “A majority of online adults can identify a strong password when they see one and recognize the dangers of using public Wi-Fi. However, many struggle with more technical cybersecurity concepts, such as how to identify true two-factor authentication or determine if a webpage they are using is encrypted.”
Of the 1,055 adults asked to respond to 13 cybersecurity-related questions, the average person answered about five questions correctly. Approximately 20 percent answered more than eight correctly and only 1 percent received a perfect score.
The results showed that 75 percent of respondents could identify the strongest password from a list of options, and 73 percent knew that public Wi-Fi networks were unsecured and that transmitting sensitive information over public networks could increase the risk of fraud. However, only 54 percent could accurately identify phishing schemes.
Consumer knowledge was lowest with regard to multi-factor authentication processes with only 10 percent of respondents able to correctly identify such methods. Consumer knowledge regarding encrypted websites and emails, private browsing, botnets and virtual private networks was also limited, the survey revealed.
“Internet users’ understanding of the remaining cybersecurity issues measured in the survey is lower – in some cases dramatically so,” Pew reported. “For instance, 39 [percent] of internet users are aware that internet service providers (ISPs) are able to see the sites their customers are visiting while utilizing the ‘private browsing’ mode on their internet browsers. Private browsing mode only prevents the browser itself, and in some cases the user’s computer or smartphone, from saving this information – it is still visible to the ISP. And one-third (33 percent) are aware that the letter ‘s’ in a URL beginning with ‘https://’ indicates that the traffic on that site is encrypted.
“Meanwhile, just 16 [percent] of online adults are aware that a group of computers that is networked together and used by hackers to steal data is referred to as a ‘botnet.’ A similar share (13 percent) is aware that the risks of using insecure Wi-Fi networks can be minimized by using a virtual private network, or VPN.”
The survey indicates that age and education levels seem to have the greatest correlation with the results. Younger respondents with a bachelor’s degree or higher tended to perform the best.