Web-Service Security and The Digital Skills of Users: An Exploratory Study of Countries in Europe

Abstract

This study explores the impact of internet users’ and web owners’ knowledge, measured by the level of digital skills, on the number of insecure websites based on a survey of the internet. The influence of the affordability of internet access to the web space on the vulnerability of a particular European country is also considered. The study introduces a quantifiable index for assessing the insecurity of websites that is incorporated into a newly developed tool that scans websites and identifies the vulnerability in the Web Content Management System (WCMS). The collected vulnerability data and the digital skills are analyzed with statistical methods for finding the interdependences and relationships. Higher levels of digital skills and lower fixed-internet-access costs contribute to a smaller number of insecure websites. The vulnerability of the websites for different economic sectors is explored as well. The paper discusses the differences in the digital development pathways and governmental policies applied in European countries that have been affected by user knowledge and digital skills. The study brings original results and findings, as there are no similar studies addressing the impact of the knowledge of a country’s population on the level of insecurity found in the WCMS, including plug-ins.