Empirical study on the risky behavior and security awareness among secondary school pupils - validation and preliminary results

This study was based on the validated Users' Information Security Awareness Questionnaire (UISAQ). Authors gathered information on risky behavior and security awareness among 355 pupils from three secondary schools: General program secondary school (Gymnasium), Business and administrative high school and Trade school. Aim of the study was to test adapted version of UISAQ questionnaire on secondary school student population. Questionnaire was slightly modified and validated to meet new requirements regarding young pupils' behavior. Analysis outcome represent results of secondary school pupils regarding 6 subareas: Users' usual behavior (x(1)=4.12), Personal computer maintenance (x(2)=3.33), Borrowing access data (x(3)=4.77), Awareness about security in communications (x(4)=2.67), Belief into securing data (x(5)=2.27) and Importance of backup quality (x(6)=3.86). Also some detailed comparisons regarding demographic variables and correlation with students and employed users were given. Additionally, correlations with revealing password and Internet abuse are given. The percentage of young pupils that have revealed their password for their e-mail system access is much higher than usual (77.7%). This information should alert government institutions and schools teachers. Main results of this study have shown that slightly modified UISAQ can be used on the secondary school population. Additional results have shown that there is a great reason to be concerned about pupils' risky behavior on the Internet and their low awareness about information security and privacy issues.