Students Information Security Practices and Awareness

As cyber threats continue to grow at an exponential rate, the need for training in information security awareness spreads far beyond the Information Technology college curriculum. Information Security proliferates into various domains of knowledge and becomes more context-aware. Consequently, the training in information awareness at a college level must cater more specifically to students' practices. This paper presents the results of the Information Security survey conducted among students of the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Los Angeles in spring 2011. The survey revealed several characteristics of students' practices and their awareness of risks and countermeasures related to computer skills, mobile computing, loss and encryption of data, online social networking, awareness training, correlation between practice and awareness, and others. The survey also revealed that the major problem with security awareness is not due to a lack of security knowledge, but in the way the students apply that knowledge in real-world situations. Simply, the compliance with information security awareness is lower than the understanding of it. The findings discussed in this paper are provided to assist colleges in designing curriculum that includes more context-based Information Security training.