Americans - Not Role Models

I've written quite a few articles that may put American citizens/officials in a bad light when it comes to cyber-security, but all these news have been based on bare facts - nothing is made up. And another study by Mcafee and the NCSA comes to prove that what has been said until now is true.

As the study shows, less than 1 in 4 Americans are fully protected against the whole batch of threats that exists out there. This is a number that should cause worries, in my opinion and it means that more actions should be taken for people to act better on cyber-security.

Now, I don't know why, but the people that have been questioned stated a totally different thing than what's actually going on with their computer. And allow me to give you some examples - 92% of them think they have an up-to-date anti-virus solution, but only 51% have received an updated DAT file within the past week. Furthermore, only 64% of Americans have an enabled firewall, even though 73% claim they have installed such a program.

However, they are aware of the threats that are out there, as 99% have heard about spyware while 75 are aware of phishing. This is a bit contradictory, in my opinion - they know of these dangers, yet only 55% of them actually have an anti-spyware tool installed on their machine.

Now, what seemed rather bizarre to me is that older people seem to be savvier when it comes to cyber-security. 25% of Americans aging over 45 are fully protected, versus only 18% of the younger ones, as the same study points out. This is exactly the opposite to what is going on in my country, where people over 45 are not so computer-savvy, not to mention anything about cyber-security.