Page 54 - Cyber Warnings

Why today s university students pose a massive cyber threat

and what to do about it

By François Amigorena, CEO, IS Decisions

To any IT security person working within a university, students are one heck of a headache. Old
enough to make adult decisions but young enough to make naïve judgements, students pose a
security challenge akin to holding water in a sieve.

Despite being digitally savvy and the future of the workforce, students often regard IT security
as a barrier rather than a safeguarder — much in the same way as perhaps they view their
parents in some situations. While mom and dad may know best, children will often do what they
want to until something bad happens.

Arguably, it’s the same with cybersecurity. Until a student personally experiences the theft of
their own data, which costs them money or causes any kind of hindrance, convenience is likely
to be much more important than security.

And then the IT practices that are taken for granted by most employees by the time they turn 30
fall to the wayside.

The stats back up these assumptions. While 70% of higher education students are aware of the
threats of cyber crime, most (80%) aren’t concerned by cyberattacks, and 65% don’t see
cybersecurity as their concern.

These findings go some way to explaining students’ poor security habits. Many problems stem
from poor password practice. For example, many students will use the simplest and easiest-to-
crack passwords — sometimes the same one for all their accounts.

Indeed, a report analysing more than 5 million stolen passwords in 2016 found a huge number
of “ridiculously insecure” passwords, including ‘123456’ and even ‘password’.

And even when they may use simple passwords, those same students will forget or lose their
login details, meaning they borrow their friends’ logins to do their work. IS Decisions research,
for example, found that nearly 35% of those aged 16–24 have shared their password with at
least one other person, compared with the average figure across all ages of 23%.

Aside from password practice, many students may also feel that it’s ok to leave their laptop
logged in unattended in the library when they go out to take a break.

They’re not necessarily bothered about how they access their files and systems, provided they
can do it quickly — and you can hardly blame them for the practices they adhere to if they’ve
neither been trained nor had to suffer the consequences of a breach.
54 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – May 2017 Edition
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