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 METHODOLOGY 3

3 RESULTS 3

3.1 ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE 4

3.2 DATA BACK-UP 6
3.3 BROWSER 6

4 SURVEY CONCLUSION 7

5 RECOMMENDATIONS 7
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, essays… to their own computer for good.
Everything went fine until one day their PC is crashed by some reasons and everything
about their data is lost. For that reason, protect data is required to prevent this situation
happen again. This survey has made to investigate about how student at COU protect their
data and how safe they are. The investigation around those IT students at COU whose are
more familiar with computer and got better in computer skills than other groups of
student. The target have made by focus on main thing: Their experience about data
security and what kind of software they using to prevent data from risks. I believe that
survey serves the twins objectives which are check the current status of information
security in University and also give us an opportunity to have a better way to protect data.

2 Methodology
The survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire which delivered for student
in-person, about 15 copies were used and 12 were responded (80%). All the questions has
given in the survey were made by group F base on our knowledge about data security

3 Results
According to our group 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

Figure 1

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

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

No

Yes

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Figure 2

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 most reason that makes students lose their information from PC is come from internet
with virus. It happens when they browsing some sites which consists some kind of virus
that can crash whole OS with their information without any defend system or firewall.
Figure below show the software students usually use for defend their system:

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

NOD32

Window security

F-Secure

Avasti

Bitdefender

AVG

ESET

Kaspersky

0 1 2 3 4

Figure 3

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 is not provide full
function for software.

The next table is show effective that 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

Figure 4

It seems like most of student just scan their system whenever they have some problems
with the OS or they remember (42%). It’s mean 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.

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

3.2 Data Back-up

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

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

Figure 5

According to this graph, those IT students used to 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, surf web is become familiar with 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:

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

Google Chorme

Maxthon

Opera

Firefox

Internet Explorer

0 2 4 6 8 10

The result shows that most of IT students uses Firefox for browsing (75%) and the
reasons have given are: fast and safe, have a lot add-on... which present that they have
some knowledge about their browser.

4 Survey conclusion
Information technology with its applications has been growing rapidly and become
popular for all people include students of COU. Follow 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 aware to this risk.
The result can become a key to help students of COU have a better plan for protect their
personal information.

5 Recommendations

According to this survey results, it show that some of student not really aware with the
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…

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Degree Programme In Information Technology Report

and usually make a strong password to protect their information if require. Also, back up
the computer data frequently (i.e. once a month for example).

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