Google: Consumers Wary Of Security Updates

Average Internet users are wary of security updates, and consider even mistaken as a security risk, according to research ( pdf ) from Google. The Internet giant decided the security behaviour of 231 294 security experts and Internet users who are not experts to compare.

For example, among other things, to the top five security measures take any consideration of both groups. It shows that average Internet users underestimate the importance of security updates seriously. 35% of the experts called to install security updates as a security measure, while only 2% of users doing this. As a result, the installation of the patches is a security measure, with the largest difference between users and experts.


Further research into this behaviour shows that 39% of the experts shows automatically install updates, while among users is 29%. In addition, 25% of the experts said that updates are installed immediately. When the user, this is done by only 9%.According to the researchers did not make installing updates as timely as possible with bad past experiences or that users do not realise its effectiveness.

Passwords

The study also shows that password management is important for both users and experts, but there different approaches are used. The experts often use password managers. The difference between experts and users is a factor of three. 24% of users said for some accounts using a password manager, while it is 73% of the experts. Furthermore, users will find anti-virus software very important, while experts prefer other measures.

"Our results show that experts and non-experts take various measures to protect themselves on the Internet. The action of the experts be experts considered good advice, while the actions of the non-experts get mixed reactions from experts," said the researchers. They argue that there is room for improvement when it comes to identifying the main security and to then make this clear to users.