As specialists in the field, we look forward to the report\u2019s release. But as we\u00a0wrote a year ago<\/a>, the complete lack of media and expert interest in the study is amazing. Heaven help the survey authors if they have to justify its impact based on media coverage.<\/p>\n The UK government has adopted\u00a0a bizarrely triumphalist discourse<\/a>\u00a0around cybersecurity, one that is clearly at odds with the experience of the 1,329 survey participants from the UK. In fact, year on year the survey results reflect that the UK is not in a good position, particularly in comparison to some of our more advanced neighbours. This is probably not what Downing Street wants to hear or publicise \u2013 particularly in an election year \u2013 as it seems that providing some sort of external or independent accountability for the impact of the hundreds of millions of public money spent is not a top priority.<\/p>\n The UK is not alone in its disdain for the survey\u2019s results, which were similarly disregarded by most other Europeans. It\u2019s a sad outcome for the only large, non-commercial, unbiased, and independent survey on this important topic.<\/p>\n There are lots of facts in the report, including some that are very apparent to most people: internet use is up, mobile internet use is leading the way, Europe shows a marked digital divide between nations like Sweden and The Netherlands and others like Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. Other findings include how more than half (57%) of Europeans shop online, 23% sell online, and 54% use online banking. That last figure is relatively large, in our view, taking into account the associated risks.<\/p>\n The two most common concerns of European citizens are the misuse of personal data and the security of online payments \u2013 responders were significantly more worried about both than they were last year. At least, good practices such as installing antivirus software (61%), not opening suspicious-looking emails (49%), and being careful not to give away personal information (38%) seem to be increasingly popular.<\/p>\n Not only are people more concerned with the risks of cybercrime but 47% believed they were well informed, up from 44% last year. They claimed to avoid disclosing personal information online (89%), believed the risk of cybercrime is increasing (85%), and were concerned their personal information is not kept sufficiently secure by websites (73%) or public authorities (67%). This last point is worth emphasizing: two thirds of the citizens don\u2019t trust the government or any other public authorities to keep their personal data safe \u2013 there is a large margin for improvement here.<\/p>\n Citizens are worried about identity theft (68%), malware infection (66%), online banking or bank card fraud (63%), having email or social media accounts hacked (60%), receiving scam phonecalls or emails (57%), or coming across racial or religious hate material (46%) or child pornography (52%) online. Interestingly, 47% are concerned with\u00a0cyber-extortion<\/a>\u00a0and ransomware \u2013 a relatively new method that\u2019s been very profitable for cybercriminals of late. In all cases, concern is up on last year.<\/p>\n Quite shocking is the finding that, despite being apparently aware of the many risks they face online, an incredible 74% of respondents thought they were able to protect themselves sufficiently from cybercriminals. We simply haven\u2019t the words to express what overconfidence this demonstrates, and how unrealistic and dangerous it is. Computers and network security are complex matters \u2013 most people\u2019s understanding of them, including ours, is at best incomplete and at worst practically absent. How people can believe they can protect themselves after, for example, having already discovered malware on their devices (as reported by 47% of respondents) is beyond us.<\/p>\n Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are the three leading European countries for internet use. That might naturally imply correspondingly higher levels of cybercrime \u2013 but the survey findings suggest not. Whatever these nations are doing in terms of education, investment and technology development, we can do much worse than learning from then \u2013 or at the very least imitating their good practises.<\/p>\n As ever the UK results are discouraging. Britain misses the leading group by a large margin, and despite\u00a0well-publicised government campaigns<\/a>\u00a0and huge investment in cybersecurity, we show very little overall improvement. Britain leads the way in misplaced confidence: 89% feel we can protect ourselves against cybercrime, which is a bad omen. It experienced the largest yearly increase on accidentally finding materials promoting racial hatred or religious extremism. And the UK also tops European tables of bank card and online bank fraud with 17% of citizens affected. The average is 8%, and in Germany for example the rate is 2%. The UK performs poorly in other areas too, casting a cloud not only on the UK but on crime rates for the whole of Europe.<\/p>\n More positively, the UK seems to be good at changing passwords and feeling well-informed about cybercrime, is among the leading countries where citizens are concerned over the use of their personal data, and also enjoyed the largest fall in scam emails and phone calls. Despite the large increase from last year, it\u2019s also still extremely rare for UK users to encounter child pornography or racial or religious extremism materials online.<\/p>\n One problem is that the government\u2019s information campaigns are focused largely on companies rather than individuals \u2013 some may argue that in this respect it\u2019s no exception to Tory policy in other areas. Thus the Eurobarometer survey is probably not doing justice to the current UK government\u2019s considerable, but possibly misguided, efforts.<\/p>\n People, not companies, should be prioritised; legislation and incentives should be aimed at protecting citizens and helping them to protect themselves. The main response to mistrust of government use of their data, in particular, should be to give them back more control. There have been some positive moves from\u00a0Labour<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Liberal Democrats<\/a>\u00a0in that direction \u2013 but for now they are merely pre-election promises.<\/p>\n At the very least, could future governments please copy whatever it is they\u2019re doing right in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and some of our other more competent neighbours?<\/p>\n Article first published in The Conversation<\/a> and republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cybersecurity experts Julio Hernandez-Castro and Eerke Boiten respond to the European survey on cybersecurity. The European Commission\u2019s annual\u00a0Eurobarometer Cyber Security Survey, the third edition of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5321,"featured_media":340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1479,124,57908,122],"tags":[37339,37411,57886,19031,37400],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1432,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/1432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentcomp-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Falling on deaf ears<\/h2>\n
Eurobarometer survey results<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>What needs to be done<\/h2>\n