Abstract:

Young people are willing to use modern technologies in their life. In the examined group of people, 100% of them claimed to use the Internet every day. Even when contacting friends they are using IT technologies. All of them are using social media – 77,5% of them every day. Moreover, various services are nowadays delivered in a digital form. 95% of respondents claimed to use at least one of such services as Internet banking, trusted profile (Polish Government e-office), auction service, etc. The same percentage of respondents mentioned using e-services delivered by schools, universities or firms. That proves the significant role of IT technologies in young people’s lives. Unfortunately, the popularity of digital technologies is combined with a high number of cyber-attacks. According to Check Point Research data in the second quarter of 2023 the increase of the number of cyber-attacks was 8% worldwide. In comparison to 2022, the number of attacks in 2023 was 33% greater. Because of this, it is very important to keep a high level of user awareness in the cyber security domain and educate them appropriately. In this study, the authors examined the consciousness of cyber security among young people and examined their knowledge in this domain at various levels of education to verify the thesis that a bigger stress should be put on education in the cyber security area to obtain a good level of cyber threat alertness among young people. Moreover, it is very important to educate IT students in cyber security to create specialists able to provide secure solutions and educate other cyber users.

To assess this, four working hypothesis were put:
H1. Education in the area of cyber threat recognition is necessary.
H2. IT education increases the level of awareness in cyber security.
H3. Additional training is necessary during IT studies to enable students to get skills in cyber threat recognition.
H4. It is necessary to repeat training in cyber security threat detection because of fast developments in attacking techniques and people's tendency to forget about the danger.

To confirm these hypotheses a group of 104 young people was interviewed. These people were attending secondary school or studying at various stages. They were asked about their experiences in cyber security. The results obtained in the survey revealed that the best results in recognising cyber threats were found among people who were recently trained in this respect. Unfortunately there was another disturbing tendency – a percentage of people who were trained were giving a significant number of false positives while asked to identify if a situation was a threat. This reveals that their training may not have been properly done or they are very suspicious while analysing the content of the Internet. We cannot say that they are safe on the Internet, because they were unable to recognise risk adequately. The research carried out allowed to confirm our thesis by identifying that young people are becoming more aware in the cyber security area during their education, but the way they are trained should be carefully analysed and improved because of some serious gaps found in their skills.

Keywords:

Cybersecurity, young learners, survey.