Report

Course name

Research and reporting

Assignment

Report for survey

Authors

Nguyen Ngoc Long

Ann Viitala

Adesh Chymariya

Shu Sheng
Date of the report

4/19/2010

ABSTRACT
CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION 3

2 THEORETICAL FRAMWORK, METHODOLOGY AND DATA 3

3 RESULTS 4

3.1 ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE 5

3.2 DATA BACK-UP 6
3.3 BROWSER 7

4 DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSION ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

5 RECOMMENDATIONS 8
Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

1 Introduction
Data Protection is quite important for students, especially in universities. Nowadays,
people used to store their assignments, essay and other works to their own computer for
good. Everything can go fine but sometimes it can go the other way around especially
when PC starts to crash. For some reasons, one can lost everything that was stored in just
a snap of a finger. That is why protecting data is required to prevent this situation to
happen again. This survey is made to investigate how students of COU protect their data
and how safe their data are. The investigation is conducted with the aid of the IT students
of COU who are more familiar with computers and have better computer skills than the
other groups of students. The target is made by focusing on two main things: (1) their
experience about data security and (2) what kind of software they are using to prevent
data from risks. It is believed that this survey serves the twins objectives which are to
check the current status of information security in the university and also to give us an
opportunity to have a better way to protect data.

2 Theoretical Framework, Methodology and Data

A study revealed that 60% of corporate data were unprotected in PC desktops and laptops.
One of the reasons for data loss was attributed to viruses. Each month, the PC’s were
infected with viruses at a rate of 10%. (Doyle 2002.) Even though they were using anti-
virus applications, they rarely updated their files and performed virus scan (Kandra 2003).
Hardware or system malfunction is still the number one cause of data loss (American
Data Recovery 2003). The corporate world is the biggest users of databases and other
forms of data storage applications because their data are very important and crucial to
their business operations. The statistical data and the results of the survey conducted on
how the corporate world protect and secure their data will be used as the theoretical
source of our research.

The group mainly relied on quantitative approach in conducting the survey. A total of 15
questionnaires were given to IT students of COU belonging to BITS07K, BITS08K, and
BITS09K group respectively. In each question, choices were provided for the students to
tick which would then correspond to their chosen answer(s). In some questions, students
need to justify their choice.

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

After the questionnaires were collected from the students/respondents, the data gathered
were tallied and analyzed.

3 Results
According to our group’s opinion, first of all, the survey has to analyze how safe they are
in using computer.

Other
School
1
Workplace
Public
Home

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

GRAPH 1. Places where students usually have access to computers

The graph above shows the places the students go to access their data or access the
network. It seems that home access is the most common and at the university which are
quite trusted place for this. Despite of that, there is still a chance to encounter data
problem for students, question “Have you ever encountered data problem?” were asked
then the results show below:

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

No

Yes

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

GRAPH 2. Students who encounter data loss problems

It’s look like students still have some problem with their information and the reason
answered follow this question is quite similar with problems come from PC hardware (PC
or Hard disk crashed) or from operating system problem. We have recorded one person
that lost his/her data from school network which is quite rare.

3.1 Anti-virus software

The number one cause why students lose their information from PC is due to viruses from
internet. It happens when they are browsing some sites which consists some kind of virus
that can crash whole OS with their information without any defending system or firewall.
Figure below show the software the students usually use in defending their system:

NOD32

Window security

F-Secure

Avasti

Bitdefender

AVG

ESET

Kaspersky

0 1 2 3 4

GRAPH 3. The type of anti-virus software students are using

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

Those software listed about is quite effective for secure system from virus but about
10/12 (83%) of respondents said that they using the free version which does not provide
full function for software.

The next table shows how efficient they use their anti-virus software to protect PC when
they were asked “How often you perform a full- system virus scan?”

Never

When I remember or PC in danger

At least once a year

At least once a month

At least once a week

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

GRAPH 4. The frequency of performing anti-virus scan

It seems that most of the students just scan their system whenever they have some
problems with the OS or they remember (42%). It means that when they scan the system,
the viruses already exist in the system. Result also show about 50% have system scan in
weekly or monthly.

3.2 Data Back-up

On the other hand, the information is lost due to some technical problems (PC crashed or
accidents). One way to prevent that situation is to back-up data then save it to another
place. Our group also asks the question about how often they back-up their data and here
is the result:

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

Never

once in every 6 months

At least once a year

At least once a month

At least once a week

Everyday

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

GRAPH 5. The frequency of performing file back-up

According to this graph, IT students backup their data at least once a month, about 50%
respondents have back-up their information once a month and 100% respondents got data
backup.

3.3 Browser

Nowadays, web surfing is becoming a familiar activity to everyone and a lot of browser
providers with different abilities for users to choose. This survey also found out what kind
of browsers IT students usually use:

Google Chorme

Maxthon

Opera

Firefox

Internet Explorer

0 2 4 6 8 10

GRAPH 6. The type of web browser students are using

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

The result shows that most of IT students use Firefox for browsing (75%) and the reasons
they gave were the following: fast and safe, have a lot add-on. This shows that they have
some knowledge about their browser.

4 Discussions and Conclusions

Information technology with its applications has been growing rapidly and become
popular for all people including students of COU. Following with this development,
information security also become important for those who always work with data. This
survey captures how IT students meet their problem in data security and how they protect
their information from lost or damage. The survey especially selected its target group is
IT students with have skills in IT fields and should be more careful in data protection and
the key point of this survey is how good they are in this field. Results of this survey help
understand the trend to protect information of student and how they are aware of this risk.
The result can become a key to help students of COU have a better plan for protect their
personal information. Majority of the respondents of our survey revealed that they have
encountered data loss problems and they attributed it to hardware or system malfunction
caused by viruses from internet. Although they are using anti-virus applications, it was
found out that it did not help that much because most of them are using free version and
the functionality provided by those free anti-virus applications are limited. Furthermore,
most of them rarely perform virus scan on a regular basis.

5 Recommendations

According to this survey results, it shows that some of students are not really aware with
data lost problem. If students want to prevent the risk from information security, they
should have a better strategy or plan to do that. We suggest that they should have software
anti-virus from trusted provider like: Microsoft, F-Secure, Kaspersky or Bitdefender. A
strong password should always be implemented. In creating a password, it should be
composed of at least eight characters. It is highly recommended that students perform
virus scan at least twice or once a month. Furthermore, students should back up their
computer data at least once a month.

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6 References
1. American Data Recovery. 2003. Available:
http://www.adrdatarecovery.com/content/adr_loss_stat.html. Accessed 2 May 2010.
2. Doyle, Cynthia. 2002. Business Continuity in 2002: It’s Not Business as Usual. IDC.
3. Kandra, A., Brandt, A. 2003. Great American Privacy. PC World. Available:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/112468-3/great_american_privacy_makeover.html.
Accessed 2 May 2010.

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