As you should have read in my previous, I finished up all of the plug-ins my mentor recommended. From there, I had to decide what to do next. We came up with a few more plug-ins just for fun as they aren't necessary for my research as well as outlined the remaining parts of my research. What we came up with was the survey, which I had already planned to do from the beginning, and continued our conversation from there. It led to many topics I could include in my survey which would be narrowed down and formatted to fit the typical syntax of a survey. I do not have the survey finished because I would really prefer to finalize and perfect every aspect of it. I can't afford to be unprofessional and colloquial in my diction because I am basically asking you guys for your own time to help me. I digress. This post will be going a bit more in depth what my survey will cover. Consider it a teaser for the actual release.
One of the most populated topics of cyber-security that people (that is, people not privy to cyber-security) discuss is passwords, and the theft thereof. What defines password security? What makes it strong or weak? What is a good password? Well, that's one of the many questions my research plans to help answer and, in order to make my argument much more convincing, I need to gather data from you. Now, I'm not going to ask for your passwords. That's just idiotic. I'm going to ask about your thought process. Do you simply choose a word that means nothing to you? Or is it an item or idea very special to you? Do you commonly use uppercase. numbers, symbols? How long do you tend to make your passwords? I need to know these facts in order to show you what people do, and help change your poor password choosing habits. I need to also make clear in my survey that I intend to keep all these answers confidential. Well, I shouldn't even say keep. Everyone will be anonymous and I intend to trash your answers once that data is collected. I need the participants to feel safe and comfortable when answering. You'd be surprised how many people shy away from these things or may feel embarrassed when bringing up a poor habit. It is crucial that my data accurately represents what you guys actually do, not what you think you do.
Now this is only one of the topics that will be included in my survey. I will be asking about your online habits and security programs. Where do you keep your passwords? Do you save your passwords? Do you visit unsafe sites? Why do you think they are unsafe? safe? These are the kinds of questions I will be asking. I hope you better get an idea as to what I plan to accomplish after reading this. It's a much more arduous task than I originally thought -- one I didn't think would take this long. I hope you enjoyed my blog this week and I look forward to reading your comments. As always, this is Adam, signing off.
