Online Information Security Research Articles

Caregivers' Role in Cybersecurity for Aging Information Technology Users with Intellectual Disabilities.

Information technology (IT) users with intellectual disabilities (ID) are likely to experience online privacy violations without adequate support from their caregivers. Given that aging users face additional challenges when using IT than their younger counterparts, the goal of this exploratory study is to investigate caregivers' strategies and barriers for helping to protect the privacy of aging IT users with ID. Six caregivers (four paid caregivers, two family members) of aging users with ID completed a series of six focus groups about their experiences assisting the people they support with using IT, including their strategies and barriers for helping to protect these users' privacy. Participants were also asked about their own attitudes and experiences related to online privacy and information security. Based on our inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data, participants used three main strategies to help protect the privacy of aging users with ID: (1) restricting access to personal information, (2) limiting disclosure of personal details, and (3) providing just-in-time instruction and feedback. We also identified four key barriers to privacy protection: (1) limited awareness and knowledge about information security, (2) balancing privacy and autonomy, (3) maintaining professional boundaries, and (4) residential care services' policies. Inclusive and transdisciplinary research is needed to address the elevated privacy and security risks for aging IT users with ID, and provide caregivers with training on how to support this population to use IT safely. Technology developers should create solutions to decrease aging users with ID's dependence on caregivers for privacy protection.

The Role of Cue Utilization and Cognitive Load in the Recognition of Phishing Emails.

Phishing emails represent a major threat to online information security. While the prevailing research is focused on users' susceptibility, few studies have considered the decision-making strategies that account for skilled detection. One relevant facet of decision-making is cue utilization, where users retrieve feature-event associations stored in long-term memory. High degrees of cue utilization help reduce the demands placed on working memory (i.e., cognitive load), and invariably improve decision performance (i.e., the information-reduction hypothesis in expert performance). The current study explored the effect of cue utilization and cognitive load when detecting phishing emails. A total of 50 undergraduate students completed: (1) a rail control task; (2) a phishing detection task; and (3) a survey of the cues used in detection. A cue utilization assessment battery (EXPERTise 2.0) then classified participants with either higher or lower cue utilization. As expected, higher cue utilization was associated with a greater likelihood of detecting phishing emails. However, variation in cognitive load had no effect on phishing detection, nor was there an interaction between cue utilization and cognitive load. Further, the findings revealed no significant difference in the types of cues used across cue utilization groups or performance levels. These findings have implications for our understanding of cognitive mechanisms that underpin the detection of phishing emails and the role of factors beyond the information-reduction hypothesis.

Network Communication Based on Embedded Microprocessor Accelerates the Development of Preschool Education

<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">With the advent of the information age, all kinds of data and information emerge in endlessly, and the various network information data that students are exposed to are more and more complicated. How to strengthen the ideological and political education of college students in the new era of network information to ensure that students can It is a new challenge faced by every college educator to have good ideological and ethical qualities and to grow up healthily in the rapidly changing network environment, so as to realize the all-round development of students. Therefore, in response to the current difficulties and challenges of online ideological and political education, colleges and universities should adopt targeted strategies in a timely manner to continuously strengthen college students' awareness of online information security to meet the development requirements of the era of big data. This article will discuss the real dilemma and countermeasures of college network ideological and political education from the perspective of big data, hoping to provide valuable reference and reference for related research.</span>

Comparing the Effects of Two Methods of Education (Online versus Offline) and Gender on Information Security Behaviors

The importance of information security is increasing, and various efforts are being made to improve users’ information security behaviors. Among these various efforts, information security education is mainly aimed at providing users with information security knowledge and improving information security awareness. This study classified the types of information security education into offline and online to examine the effects of each education method on attitudes toward information security (perceived severity, vulnerability, self-efficacy and response-efficacy) and information security behaviors. A survey was conducted for users with information security education experiences. The results obtained by comparing the differences in the path coefficients of personal information security behaviors according to information security education experiences showed that security behaviors were more significant in the online experience group than the offline group. In addition, gender differences were analyzed, and it was found that females had a greater impact on information security attitudes than males. This study also found that among Internet users with online information security education experience, females tend to have more information security behavior than males, but there were contrasting results among users with offline information security education experiences. The results of this study finally address the necessity of reflecting users’ personalities in the systematic design of information security education in the future. Furthermore, the results of this study support the need for an appropriate education system that sufficiently understands education types to maximize the effects of information security education.

Towards a framework for online information security applications development: A socio-technical approach

The paper presents a validated socio-technical information security (STInfoSec) framework for the development of online information security (InfoSec) applications. The framework addresses both social and technical aspects of InfoSec design. The preliminary framework was developed using a mixed methods research design that collected data from 540 surveys by online banking users and six interviews with online banking personnel. The preliminary framework was presented in another publication and it is beyond the scope of this paper. The scope of this paper is limited to the validation findings of the evaluation process that involves seven evaluators. In the socio-technical context, the STInfoSec framework facilitates acceptance and usability of online applications based on online banking as a case study. The authors argue that usability of online InfoSec applications such as online banking significantly affects the adoption and continued use of such applications. As such, the paper investigates design principles for usable security and proposes a validated STInfoSec framework that consists of 12 usable security design principles. The design principles have been validated through heuristic evaluation by seven field experts for inclusion in the final STInfoSec framework. The development of InfoSec applications can be improved by applying these design principles.

It's the deceiver and the receiver: Individual differences in phishing susceptibility and false positives with item profiling.

Phishing email is one of the biggest risks to online information security due to its ability to exploit human trust and naivety. Prior research has examined whether some people are more susceptible to phishing than others and what characteristics may predict this susceptibility. Given that there are no standardised measures or methodologies to detect phishing susceptibility, results have conflicted. To address this issue, the current study created a 40-item phishing detection task to measure both cognitive and behavioural indicators of phishing susceptibility and false positives (misjudged genuine email). The task is based on current real-life email stimuli (i.e., phishing and genuine) relevant to the student and general population. Extending previous literature we also designed a methodology for assessing phishing susceptibility by allowing participants to indicate perception of maliciousness of each email type and the actions they would take (keep it, trash it or seek further information). This enabled us to: (1) examine the relationships that psychological variables share with phishing susceptibility and false positives–both captured as consistent tendencies; (2) determine the relationships between perceptions of maliciousness with behavioural outcomes and psychological variables; and (3) determine the relationships between these tendencies and email characteristics. In our study, 150 undergraduate psychology students participated in exchange for partial course credit (98 Females; Mean age = 19.70, SD = 2.27). Participants also completed a comprehensive battery of psychometric tests assessing intelligence, pre- and on-task confidence, Big 6 personality, and familiarity/competence in computing and phishing. Results revealed that people showed distinct and robust tendencies for phishing susceptibility and false positives. A series of regression analyses looking at the accuracy of both phishing and false positives detection revealed that human-centred variables accounted for a good degree of variance in phishing susceptibility (about 54%), with perceptions of maliciousness, intelligence, knowledge of phishing, and on-task confidence contributing significantly, directly and/or indirectly via perception of maliciousness. A regression model looking at discriminating false positives has also shown that human-centred variables accounted for a reasonable degree of variance (41%), with perceptions of maliciousness, intelligence and on-task confidence contributing significantly, directly and/or indirectly via perception of maliciousness. Furthermore, the characteristics of the most effective phishing and misjudged genuine email items were profiled. Based on our findings, we suggest that future research should investigate these significant variables in more detail. We also recommend that future research should capture consistent response tendencies to determine vulnerability to phishing and false positives (rather than a one off response to a single email), and use the collection of the most current phishing email obtained from relevant sources to the population. It is important to capture perceptions of maliciousness of email because it is a key predictor of the action taken on the email. It directly predicts accuracy detection of phishing and genuine email, as well as mediating the relationships between some other predictors whose role would have been overlooked if the perceptions were not captured. The study provides the framework of human-centred variables which predict phishing and false positive susceptibility as well as the characteristics of email which most deceive people.

Enc-DNS-HTTP: Utilising DNS Infrastructure to Secure Web Browsing

Online information security is a major concern for both users and companies, since data transferred via the Internet is becoming increasingly sensitive. The World Wide Web uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to transfer information and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to secure the connection between clients and servers. However, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is vulnerable to attacks that threaten the privacy of information sent between clients and servers. In this paper, we propose Enc-DNS-HTTP for securing client requests, protecting server responses, and withstanding HTTPS attacks. Enc-DNS-HTTP is based on the distribution of a web server public key, which is transferred via a secure communication between client and a Domain Name System (DNS) server. This key is used to encrypt client-server communication. The scheme is implemented in the C programming language and tested on a Linux platform. In comparison with Apache HTTPS, this scheme is shown to have more effective resistance to attacks and improved performance since it does not involve a high number of time-consuming operations.

Online Security Performances and Information Security Disclosures

This study tests whether the voluntary disclosures in the annual reports concerning information security are credible. It also develops a scale to measure online security performances and identifies influencing factors. Our findings provide insights into the online security performances of financial institutions. Specifically, they manifest the similarity of online security performances within the same business sector and across different markets. Through finding a positive relation between online security performances and information security disclosures, our results confirm the credibility of the latter. Our study also extends the Technology-Organization-Environment framework for explaining online security performances. While the results show all three variables: (1) importance of information security as measured by its disclosures, (2) existence of government regulation, and (3) firm size, have significant and positive effects on online security performances, only the first two variables have such effects on the adoption of two-factor authentication.

Who am I, and where's my money? Issues in online security

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the issue of online security.Design/methodology/approachDiscusses the problem of breaches in online information sharing and security.FindingsThere are many issues to be considered in addressing the matter of online information security that is so important for the future stability of the online world.Originality/valueProvides a discussion on policy formulation at international and national level, to trust building as a key to online security, to specific technical processes that might help thwart breaches of this security.