Understanding Individual Differences: Factors Affecting Secure Computer Behaviour

Understanding users’ individual differences may provide clues to help identify com- puter users who are prone to act insecurely. We examine factors that impact home users’ reported computer security behaviour . We conducted two online surveys with a total of 650 participants to investigate the relationship between self-reported se- curity behaviour and users’ knowledge, motivation, confidence, risk propensity, and sex-typed characteristics. We found that all of these factors impacted security be- haviour, with knowledge as the most important predictor. We further show that a user’s affinity to feminine or masculine characteristics is a better determinant of security behaviour than using binary male/female descriptors. Our study enabled us to confirm earlier results in the literature in a non-organizational setting, and to extend the literature by studying additional factors and by comparing the relative importance of each factor as a predictor of security behaviour.