Using anomalous data to foster conceptual change in security awareness

Abstract

Users are often regarded as the weakest link in an information system. To this, information security awareness nowadays gains much attention in organizations, schools, and universities. Since the practice of safe computing involves individual perception, effective pedagogy that can deliver a proper message about security awareness is vital for information security education. This article reports an experiment conducted on 102 university students which determined if anomalous data can provoke conceptual change, and whether anomaly can affect the perception of information security of the students. With evidences found from the experiment, it is concluded that conceptual change fostered by anomalous data is an effective pedagogy for information security education. ©2009 IEEE.