Reference no: EM132580629 , Length: 1900 Words

Assignment -

PART 1 -

A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic (in journal articles, conference proceedings, books and other relevant sources) by recognised researchers. Understanding the prior research on a particular topic is the basis of most new research. Researchers must know what has been studied, discussed and recommended by others in related areas.

Information technology security is an increasingly important research topic. Although organisations spend large amounts on technology that can help safeguard the security of their information and computing assets, increased attention is being focused on the role people play in maintaining a safe computing environment. This issue is important both for organisational and home computing

In this assignment you will review the published literature on user security behaviour and write a literature review that synthesizes what you have found into a summary of what is, and is not, known on the topic.

This assignment is intended to:

Help you to understand the basics of a topic that we will explore for the remainder of the semester. It will serve as a starting point for the introduction section of your research project.

Provide you with practise finding peer reviewed, recent articles about one topic.

Allow you to organize your ideas about that topic in a meaningful way (including both synthesis and critical analysis).

To do -

To successfully complete the assignment, you must begin searching for relevant literature immediately. The skills covered in Week 2 will be valuable.

This is a group assignment, and each group includes 3-4 students. Please form the group by week 2 with others attending the same lab session. You will work on assignment 2 with the same group.

Find at least 10 relevant articles. To qualify as a source of information that you can use for the assignment, these main articles must report results of empirical research (i.e. not just authors' opinions). The research results can be either qualitative or quantitative in nature. Each article must also:

Have been published in a refereed journal or conference proceedings (though you may obtain the article through an online source)

Have an extensive references section.

In addition you may choose to supplement these articles with a few articles from other sources or that do not present the authors' own results.

When you search articles, pay particular attention to the keywords below:

Perceived Severity

Perceived Self-efficacy

Perceived Effectiveness

Perceived Cost

Perceived Vulnerability

Perceived Threat

Intention to Comply

and try to find user security behaviour studies related to these variables. In that way you can use your (part of) searched articles for assignment 2.

After reading each article, you should think about how they all fit together. Your review should be organized by concepts, such as findings, rather than by sources of information. Do not proceed through the articles one-by-one. Your literature review should include an introduction, a main body that reviews the literature (and which you may choose to subdivide further), and a conclusion (which includes your own evaluations and critiques). The Student Learning Centre has some resources that you might find useful if you are unsure as to how to write or structure an essay.

Format Guidelines -

Give your literature review a title that clearly reflects the content of your review.

Include an introduction section that states the purpose of the review and a conclusion section. Include other sub-sections to help structure your work.

Double-space your review and use 12-point font.

Your review should be between 1000 and 2000 words in length.

Include appropriate citations throughout the review and a list of references at the end. Referencing should be in APA style.

Your review should include a minimum of 10 sources of information.

PART 2 -

The following recent research paper relates to an aspect of behavioural security:

Arachchilage, N. A. G. and Love, S. (2014). Security awareness of computer users: A phishing threat avoidance. Computers in Human Behavior, 38, 304-312.

You should critically evaluate the research described in the paper using the evaluation guide for surveys on page 105 of the ICT615 textbook (by B. J. Oates) and answer each of the questions in the guide with respect to the paper. You are not expected to be able to evaluate the way statistical analysis was carried out in the projects, and should assume that the reported results of the analysis are correct.

You should submit your answers to each of the questions in the evaluation guide.