Fergie's Tech Blog

AusCERT: Online Users Lack Security Skills

Karen Dearne writes on Australian IT:

A first-time survey of ordinary users' online behaviour has revealed dangerous misunderstandings about internet safety and a lack of security skills that results in one in five home computers being infected by malicious software.

Seventy-five per cent of home users routinely connect to the internet using an administrator account, and 54 per cent stay permanently connected - both poor security practices that make life easy for attackers, warns Graham Ingram, general manager of Australia's national computer emergency response team, AusCERT.

While 84 per cent use their computer for internet banking, 66 per cent for electronic payments, and 52 per cent for buying and selling online, the AusCERT Home Users Computer Security Survey found 11 per cent of respondents never updated their operating system - overwhelmingly Microsoft Windows XP - while 8 per cent never updated their anti-virus software.

Thirty per cent of 1001 respondents to the survey, conducted by Nielsen, admitted to clicking on links in spam email, 35 per cent connected to risky peer-to-peer networks for file-sharing, and 5 per cent piggybacked on a neighbour's unsecured WiFi access point.

posted by Fergie @ 5/19/2008 09:39:00 PM