Psychometric Evaluation of the Cybersecurity Concept Inventory

We present a psychometric evaluation of a revised version of the Cybersecurity Concept Inventory (CCI) , completed by 354 students from 29 colleges and universities. The CCI is a conceptual test of understanding created to enable research on instruction quality in cybersecurity education. This work extends previous expert review and small-scale pilot testing of the CCI. Results show that the CCI aligns with a curriculum many instructors expect from an introductory cybersecurity course, and that it is a valid and reliable tool for assessing what conceptual cybersecurity knowledge students learned.

How Do Home Computer Users Browse the Web?

With the ubiquity of web tracking, information on how people navigate the internet is abundantly collected yet, due to its proprietary nature, rarely distributed. As a result, our understanding of user browsing primarily derives from small-scale studies conducted more than a decade ago. To provide an broader updated perspective, we analyze data from 257 participants who consented to have their home computer and browsing behavior monitored through the Security Behavior Observatory. Compared to previous work, we find a substantial increase in tabbed browsing and demonstrate the need to include tab information for accurate web measurements. Our results confirm that user browsing is highly centralized, with 50% of internet use spent on 1% of visited websites. However, we also find that users spend a disproportionate amount of time on low-visited websites, areas with a greater likelihood of containing risky content. We then identify the primary gateways to these sites and discuss implications for future research.