As emerged in the fairly recent report commissioned by Google (“Our mobile planet: Italy”), mobile in Italy has become an indispensable part of our daily lives, with the smartphone penetration now at 28% and 50% of smartphone owners accessing the Internet every day from their device. Smartphones and mobile devices with Internet access support the Digital Natives’ need to always be connected with immediate access to information and social networks, anywhere at any time. This gives them instant access to both their social and professional lives, as well as the opportunity to seamlessly switch between the two.
The fact that there is such high mobile devices penetration in Italy has not prevented a significant increase in computer devices usage as well, notably laptops.
The objective of the project was to conduct a comprehensive users survey to get information about:
- users knowledge/awareness of security;
- perception of security;
- how they protect their devices (antivirus, personal firewall, passwords, biometric etc);
- level of confidentiality of data stored in their devices.
The project was kindly funded by Google.
The report analyses the answers given by 1012 students from over 15 Italian universities to a multiple-choice questionnaire. The analysis shows that students’ perception of their knowledge is generally wrong and that they are unaware of the risks arising from their behavior. In view of these risks, a proposal has been made to implement technical and legal measures to reduce future problems deriving from faulty or lax adoption of security measures on their mobile devices.
Your can download here the report in English.
The report was successfully presented in Milan and in Bruxelles. Here you can read a brief press release on the report.
In the following videos Francesca Bosco, Giuseppe Vaciago and Pasquale Stirparo present the main topics and results of the research.