Primary research

 Primary research is crucial for any project because it allows us to gather fresh data rather than using an older source.

To conduct my primary research, I'll be creating a google form and going to be sending the form to 10 people. The answers will be used in my final presentation regarding cyber security.

The survey includes simple questions regarding how safe people think they are online and what precautions they are taking to protect themselves.

The questions are based on quick research and my personal experiences while working at a tech company. The questions mostly have YES/NO as answers. However, there are questions with checkboxes to be able to select several options and 1 question with linear scale. The questions should be easy to answer since the questions are multiple choice based.

Click here to answer the form.

Generally, this is not too surprising. However, I expected more people would've voted for at least 4

I was expecting this to be more mixed. But, it is good that people are not ignorant about possibly getting hacked.

Unfortunately, social media accounts often get hacked. This is a good way of hackers obtaining personal data or images about a person

People not using 2FA is a key factor of getting hacked. 2FA pretty much makes you extremely secure, but it is not invulnerable. One way or another, more people should be using this, especially the people that said that their social media were hacked.

This one is quite worrisome. Everyone should have different passwords for all of their accounts. Otherwise, if one account gets compromised, the other accounts also follow suit. To reduce the amount of losses, people should have different passwords.

Anti virus software isn't really necessary unless you are downloading documents from sketchy websites. Usually an adblocker should give you a plenty of protection on the internet. VPNs are also good but only for masking your true location from a website.

60% is really high. Public internet isn't properly encrypted and everything that you do can be traced. If you are doing anything regarding your important personal data (such as bank details, etc.), it is very likely that it can be stolen.

The 20% should really start updating their devices. It doesn't have to be the same day an update releases but it should be quite soon. Maybe no more than 3-4 weeks as the update may include security changes or a loophole fix.

Browsers don't encrypt your passwords. If someone somehow gains access to your device, all of your saved passwords are compromised.

Unfortunately, there are too many cases of people falling for these attacks. These days it is even more difficult to protect yourself from these types of attacks due to the AI being able to replicate real people. Although it is possible for a lot of people to notice these, there are still some people that are vulnerable since they aren't too tech savvy.

 

 

Overall,  I'm not too happy about how many people are not really taking care of their security. The fact that 40% of people got their social media hacked and 60% of people use the same passwords across their different accounts is worrisome. The compromise of one of their accounts will result in many of their other accounts getting hacked.

References

von Solms, R. and van Niekerk, J. (2013) From information security to cyber security, Computers & Security. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404813000801 (Accessed: 30 November 2023). 

 

Pomerleau, P.-L. and Lowery, D.L. (2020) Contemporary Cybersecurity in our daily lives, SpringerLink. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-54054-8_1 (Accessed: 30 November 2023).