Data Collection Part 3:

Data Analysis:
The total number of people who took this survey was 83. All of the respondents were
9th-12th graders from River Hill High School in Howard County, Maryland. This is a good
range of demographics of people since the goal of this survey was to gage teens ages 14-18, and
students from all 4 grades took the survey. There were no questions about age or gender and this
could have been beneficial when looking further into the responses.
An important part of the survey is that the term ‘cybersecurity’ was defined. This
possibly led to some bias as it gave the respondents a pre-set definition rather than have it based
on what they knew before taking the survey. But, this also means that the students were able to
understand the meaning of cybersecurity when it was asked about in other questions. This made
the answer choice of “I do not understand” unnecessary. The purpose of this survey was not to
determine whether or not students knew what cybersecurity was, but rather how imperative it is
to society today. On top of that, this survey was designed to see whether or not students believed
that they were at risk of getting hacked. Many times, when students do not own a company, they
believe that they have no reason to worry about a potential cyberattack. However, they do not
realize that they are still at risk.
The findings of the data do suggest that teens actually do know some of the truth in that
they are concerned about the security of their data as depicted in questions 1, 2, and 4. However,
there are still students who have no concerns. The next step of this survey was to see what they
knew about the security differences in LBC’s in comparison to SMB’s. This was demonstrated
by questions 3, 6, and 7. The results showed that students believed that LBC’s were at higher risk
for cyber attacks and that they read about LBC’s being attacked very/somewhat often. But
regardless, students still believed that implementing a real-time risk management system would
be beneficial for SMB’s and that more should be done to improve the general cybersecurity of
companies.

Conclusion:
The results of this data suggests that teens do know a fair amount about cybersecurity and that
their security is at some risk. However, in regards to SMB’s and LBC’s, they do not know the
truth that SMB’s are more frequently target and are at higher risk for infiltration. But teens do
believe that more should be done in order to improve the security of companies.

Questions:
● How would a larger age range affect the data?
● Does gender have an effect on knowledge of cybersecurity?
● Can schools do more to educate students on being more aware of their security?
● Do any of the questions lead to potential data inaccuracies?
● Could any of the survey questions be answered with little-no knowledge but simply
common sense?
● How could more awareness be brought for the critical importance of taking precautions
on the internet?
● If parents were more educated on how to protect their digital info would they pass the
knowledge down onto their kids?
● What are the most common precautions that teens take on the internet?
● How many teenage SMB owners have a security system for their company?
● What is the most educated demographic of people on cybersecurity? How did they find
out about how to protect their digital info?