According to a Cybersecurity Public Awareness Survey 2018 released on Wednesday (Sep 11, 2019 conducted by the Cybersecurity Agency of Singaproe (CSA), Singaporeans' cyber hygiene still has some room for improvement.
In the almost half, or 48 per cent, of respondents had experienced at least one cyber incident in the past 12 months. Cyber incidents can include being hacked, having one's data stolen or receiving a lot of pop-up advertisements. Persistent pop-ups are a common sign of malware infection.
For those who were victims, 66 per cent indicated they changed their passwords while 44 per cent said they reported to the organisation in question.
Thirty-six per cent said they installed antivirus software as protection while 31 per cent reported the incident to the police, the survey found. One in 10 said they didn’t do anything.
And while many respondents were concerned about cybersecurity incidents, a proportion did not think they would fall victim.
For instance, 84 per cent said they were concerned about their computer being controlled by hackers illegally, but only 36 per cent felt this is likely to happen to them.
Similarly, 84 per cent were concerned over their financial information being obtained by others without consent, but just 39 per cent felt they were likely victims.
The survey also found that the proportion of respondents who use their personal mobile devices for online transactions have trended up since 2016, from 51 per cent then and 64 per cent in 2017 to 73 per cent last year.
Yet the proportion of those who installed security applications in their mobile devices fell from 53 per cent in 2017 to 45 per cent in 2018. This is despite 84 per cent of them indicating they understood the risks of not having these security apps, and 64 per cent saying they knew the functions of these apps.
A sense of complacency appears to have seeped into people’s behaviour too, as 80 per cent indicated they updated their mobile devices’ software last year – a slight dip from 83 per cent the year before.
It also showed that only 50 per cent of respondents updated the software immediately when available, down from 55 per cent in 2017.