Information Security Behaviour Profiling Framework (ISBPF) for student mobile phone users

Abstract

The mobile phone has become a necessity for many students; however it also exposes them to security threats that may result in a loss of information. In developing countries, large numbers of students are at a disadvantage because they have limited access to information relating to information security threats, unlike their counterparts in more developed societies who can readily access this information from sources such as the Internet. In addition, the developmental environment is plagued with challenges like access to the Internet and limited access to computers.The poor security behaviour exhibited by student users of mobile phones, which was confirmed by the findings of this study, is of particular interest in the context of the university in this study as most undergraduate students are offered a computer-related course which covers certain information security-related principles. This study addressed the problem of low information security awareness levels among student mobile phone users with the objective of levering security awareness as a way of stimulating safer security behaviours among mobile phone users. The resulting changes in awareness were then juxtaposed against behavioural intent changes in the proposed Information Security Behaviour Profiling Framework. Action research was selected as the appropriate methodology for this study, which saw mobile phone users exposed to various awareness campaigns with their behaviour observed before and after these interventions. This paper proposes a framework which can be used to forecast the information security behaviour profiles of student mobile phone users.The findings of this study uncover a possible link between information security awareness and information security behavioural intention, which translates into the security behaviour profiles exhibited by mobile phone users. By using the proposed framework to examine the association between information security awareness and mobile phone user security behavioural intent, this paper proposes a new method for tracking and categorising student mobile phone user security behavioural profiles. While the level of student information security awareness and behavioural intent were measured, no comparison was made between the awareness interventions implemented as part of this action research study.