week 4:Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) journal report

The Awareness of Teacher’s Trainees in Computer and Internet Security especially in Virus, Spam and Phishing

By: Goh Jun Wei and Al Arimi bin Mohd

Abstract

In this 21^st century computer is affordable and has become part and parcel of life in Malaysia. Almost all the family has at least one computer in their house. The function of computer in Malaysia basically is for the education, business, and communication and also for managing system and files. However, the awareness in computer and internet security is still in an unsatisfied level in Malaysia. Therefore the purpose of this research is to study the awareness of teacher’s trainees in IPGKDRI against computer and internet security especially in virus, spam and phishing.

Introduction

According to buzz.com, computer virus is a kind of malicious software written intentionally to enter a computer without the user’s permission or knowledge, with an ability to replicate itself, thus continuing to spread. Some viruses do little but replicate others can cause severe harm or adversely affect program and performance of the system. A virus should never be assumed harmless and left on a system. While a spam is the receiving advertising material, through the Internet to a large number of people, who have not asked for it. These two are the two major problems that most internet user faced today. Phishing is a crime where spam is sent randomly to retrieve the user’s personal banking account or to cheat money from the user. Phishing case is rising at an alarming rate because spammers are able to earn and “rob” without being traced easily. Therefore the user of internet and computer should equip themselves by having more awareness against these types of internet problems.

Literature review

Internet security is a very common topic in this modern and high technological area in the age of World Wide Web and Internet. Internet connection in Malaysia has been improving by multiple times after year 2000 as cybercafe, wireless hotspot and broadband have become more common in the public. Rolf Oppliger(1997) mentioned since its opening and commercialization in the early 1990s, the Internet has become a popular target to attack because there are a lot of personal and important information in the Web. Therefore I will like to say that whenever we surf the internet, we will face some risk of internet virus, spam or even phishing because there are people to are waiting some naive victim to fall over their trick.

In my point of view, the awareness of internet security in Malaysia is still very low. For instance, most Malaysians do not understand how a virus and their anti-virus of firewall work. All they know is that they are secure after they installed an anti virus. This is a common wrong perception from the public because there are still virus that anti-virus can't resolve. Besides that, there are also lots of types of package in anti-virus such as Kaspersky internet security, AVG free version, Avira and etc. each anti-virus and their different packages provide different types of protection to the computer.

Another major problem that we faced is that our country does not have enough expertise in this ICT field especially in internet security. For an example, this year, the Malaysia government official website was hacked several times and the recent report is that a total of 91 government websites were hacked by an unknown hacker as reported by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). As mentioned by Kemmerer, R. A., (2003) that network based attack is very dangerous and produce devastating side-effect to the system which being the victims.

Phishing victims are arising in an alarming rate especially those scams in the form of internet banking and lottery rewards. In my opinion, this is due to greediness and naive of the locals because they are not thinking wisely when they received the spam message. Besides that, some of the spam and phishing seems to be very real and official. Therefore there are more victims who fall for this trick.

Spam is getting common in Malaysia because there are more victims in phishing. The culprits earn a fortune and they keep on improving their skills to spam more victims in order to earn more money. This situation is getting from bad to worse as there are no laws and enforcement to control this problem as the sender can go anonymous simply by changing their email account or IP address.

There are many ways to prevent such problems in Malaysia and the most important thing to be done before taking any precaution and prevention is the awareness in internet security. The first and foremost step is raise awareness towards internet security. So, it is essential to provide knowledge about internet security from the early age of the internet users because internet is widely use nowadays. For instance, the schools are the most suitable places to train young internet users in internet security. For other stages like the authorities in internet security in Malaysia, they should cooperate and learn with the other countries which involve in Computer Emergency Response Teams.

Then, we have to encourage and support students in ICT field to pursue their studies in computers and internet and gain knowledge globally so that we can produce many expertises in ICT. This generation of ICT expertise is important in determining our country level of internet security and prevents hacker threat either from local hackers or foreign hackers. Most likely the hackers are young and sometimes there might be teenager, William R. Cheswick, S. M. (2003).

The problem with phishing and spam is that people are more likely to fall with the phishing tricks. It is merely about the level of awareness of the internet users on phishing and spam. The education and awareness on phishing and spam should be encouraged by the internet users themselves. Spam are created by the irresponsible person who wants to obtain easy money through scams. However, there are many sites and blogs that promote awareness on phishing and spam. So, internet users can visit these sites and blogs to obtain guidelines to prevent phishing and spam and how to identify them.

In a nutshell, Malaysia should improve the techniques and ways in preventing any threats in the internet and should educate and raise awareness to the internet users in Malaysia. The laws itself cannot protected people from being abuse in the network (Dierks, 1993)

Research approach

The research approach was conducted by creating survey on the issue and Google Docs are use to create the survey forms and 10 questions were created. The survey forms were distributed to the students in IPG KDRI and IPGKS by giving the link for them to fill in the survey forms online in the Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo Mail and the survey forms are also available in their e-mails inbox.  At least 20 students must fill in the survey forms to obtain the result more accurately.

Findings and discussions

sex
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	male	11	50.0	50.0	50.0
	female	11	50.0	50.0	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 1

In table 1, it clearly shown that in the survey, there are 11 of males and females respondent from IPGKS and IPGKDRI. The statistic for male and female are even in this survey.

Type of antivirus used
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	-	4	18.2	18.2	18.2
	Avast	5	22.7	22.7	40.9
	Kaspersky	5	22.7	22.7	63.6
	Avira	4	18.2	18.2	81.8
	AVG	1	4.5	4.5	86.4
	Trend Micro	2	9.1	9.1	95.5
	Mc Afee	1	4.5	4.5	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 2

In table 2, it shown that there are a total of 18.2% respondent that don’t know their antivirus or they didn’t even have an antivirus for their computer or laptop. This shows that quite a large number of people who are not aware of internet and computer security.

Version of antivirus
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	-	1	4.5	4.5	4.5
	Free Version	8	36.4	36.4	40.9
	Trial Version	1	4.5	4.5	45.5
	Cracked Version	4	18.2	18.2	63.6
	Original Full Version	8	36.4	36.4	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 3

In table 3, it shows that only 36.4% or 8 out of 22 person that have an original full version of antivirus that really have protection for their computer and laptop. The free and trial version users consist of 44.5% out. These types of antivirus do not offer sufficient protection to the laptop. A total of 4 persons who used cracked version which is illegal as they didn’t buy the real antivirus. These are the people who take risk of getting caught by the antivirus company even though the cracked version’s function as well as the original version.

Do you ever receive spam before?
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	-	1	4.5	4.5	4.5
	Yes	21	95.5	95.5	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 4

All the respondents received a spam before except for a respondent who didn’t answer this question.

What do you do with the spam email?
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Delete	7	31.8	31.8	31.8
	Read it	3	13.6	13.6	45.5
	Report it	6	27.3	27.3	72.7
	Delete and report it	3	13.6	13.6	86.4
	Delete and ignore it	3	13.6	13.6	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 5

A total of 13 people out of 22 will delete a spam message eventually while there are 3 respondents who read it. In this survey, it clearly shown that the respondents have some basic awareness against spam.

How effective is your antivirus?
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Very Effective	5	22.7	22.7	22.7
	Effective	8	36.4	36.4	59.1
	Moderate	7	31.8	31.8	90.9
	Not Effective	2	9.1	9.1	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 6

Even thought there are a total 22.7% who felt that their antivirus is very effective. While none of the respondent thought that their antivirus is very not effective.

Have you encountered phishing ?
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Yes	9	40.9	40.9	40.9
	No	13	59.1	59.1	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 7

In table 8, 40.8% of the respondents have encountered phishing. This shows that more than half of the respondents have never received any spam which is about phishing.

Do you think it’s important to have an antivirus?
		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Yes	21	95.5	95.5	95.5
	No	1	4.5	4.5	100.0
	Total	22	100.0	100.0

Table 8

In table 8, only 1 out of 22 respondents who thought that it’s not important to have an antivirus. Basically, that particular respondent does not have sufficient knowledge in internet and computer security.

Recommendation

It is recommend that people should use original antivirus software as it gives full protection to the user computer and it is an ethical way to use this communication technology and the most important thing is that the user of computer and internet should aware and obtain sufficient knowledge on using computer and internet so that they can solve most of the problems regarding computer and internet. Other than that, users must improve their sensitivity on current issues related on computer and internet such as spam and phishing so that they can overcome cyber crimes from the irresponsible internet users.

Conclusion

This survey can detect the awareness of certain computer and internet users on the security of their computer and internet that they are using. However, people should entirely aware on the internet security issues because internet users increase every moment as well as the increase of cyber crimes.

References:

Journal Articles from UKM subscription research databases

Oppliger, R. (1997). Internet Security : Firewalls and Beyond. COMMUNICATION OF THE ACM , 92-102.

Kemmener, R. A. (2003). Internet Security and Intrusion Detection. 748-749.

Google Scholar

Dierks, M. P. (1993). Introduction. Computer Network Abuse .

Google Books

William R. Cheswick, S. M. (2003). Picking a Security Policy. Firewalls and Internet Security Second Edition : Repelling The Wily Hacker , 7-8.