Increasing cybersecurity awareness through situated e-learning: a survey experiment

Abstract

As authentication mechanisms, passwords are the most prevalent cybersecurity measure employed. Despite its limitations and a few attempts by security researchers and experts to replace passwords with a more secure and convenient alternative, passwords continue to serve as the sole authentication method for a variety of platforms, systems, and applications. Increasing user awareness of what makes a password strong must remain a major goal. Although numerous attempts have been made to educate users on this topic, such interventions may not be equally effective. In this work, we ran a survey experiment with 168 IT students from Indonesia and Saudi Arabia to see whether two different approaches in the form of educational infographics yielded different results in terms of user knowledge of password strength. Even though one method generated a somewhat higher score in terms of knowledge, the results suggested that there was no meaningful difference between the two methods. We believe that implementing situated learning in the form of a dynamic password meter that changes in real time as the user puts in each character while establishing their passwords would result in improved knowledge and, consequently, awareness. Additional research is required to confirm this hypothesis.

Keywords: cybersecurity awareness, password strength, password meter, survey experiment

JEL Classification: I2