According to Google, the study shows there is clearly room for improvement when it comes to teaching regular users how to stay safe on the Internet.
“Our findings highlight fundamental misunderstandings about basic online security practices. Software updates, for example, are the seatbelts of online security; they make you safer, period. And yet, many non-experts not only overlook these as a best practice, but also mistakenly worry that software updates are a security risk,” Google researchers said in a
blog post.
“No practice on either list—expert or non-expert—makes users less secure. But, there is clearly room to improve how security best practices are prioritized and communicated to the vast majority of (non expert) users,” they added.
The complete
research paper, titled “...no one can hack my mind: Comparing Expert and Non-Expert Security Practices,” is available online.
