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Running Head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Security in Social Media

Name

Institutional Affiliation
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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Security in Social Media

Abstract

The study examined the various risks affecting personal data security across different

social media platforms. It also evaluated the user's security awareness. The research used

questionnaires with a set of 12 questions to collect data on the subject. It employed a

convenience sample of 20 social media users from King Faisal University female third-year

students, College of Business Administration, Department of Management Information System.

Moreover, the researcher also interviewed a cybercrime fighter to get an insight into how to deal

with social media security threats in the information era.

The study established that user awareness and knowledge influence their attitude to

behave securely on social media. It also proved that individuals from the information security

field had a higher awareness, an advantage to their occupation. The researcher recommends user

education on how to behave securely on social media platforms and public education on the

diverse social media security threats and how to avoid them.

Introduction

The information era bears a large number of social media users, among which a majority

ignore security concerns of their accounts and the data they share online. The current study seeks

to evaluate the safety and the levels of confidence that people have on social media sites. It also

aims to establish various risks associated with unauthorized access to personal data on any social

media accounts. User awareness of data security is an essential area that has received little

attention. There has been limited research examining data security threats on social media users,

hence a need to establish factors that influence user awareness on social media security.
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Furthermore, the study also intends to examine user knowledge, awareness, usefulness, and ease

of use despite the security concerns over social media websites.

The study takes account of various issues, namely the social media platform, preferences

of user security, exposure to security threats, and user’s awareness of social media security.

Information security is an essential area of research because a large population worldwide access

information through various social media platforms daily. According to Gupta (2017), social

networking has been a source of intelligence over the years. Still, cybercriminals have messed it

and target social networks to execute their malicious attacks on users across the globe. Social

media has become a platform through which cyber threats can move from one user to another

within a short period. Rose (2017) asserts that most people who access social media sites from

their offices believe that they are operating in privacy, which is never the case. Moreover, some

users reveal sensitive information oblivious to data privacy threats. The study seeks to prove the

hypothesis that students from the information security field are more aware of social media

security threats compared to their non-information security-related field counterparts.

Background

Social media plays an essential role in society. It helps people to communicate, develop

businesses, and addresses their community needs. However, social media users are prone to

experience security attacks on different platforms (Alqubaiti, 2016). Social media platforms have

experienced considerable growth in the number of users, thus an increase in user privacy threats.

Safety and trustworthiness among social media programs is a research field that has

received little attention from researchers. This study will evaluate social media safety and

confidence from users. It seeks to supplement existing literature on building social media
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security. Moreover, the study will concentrate on measuring people's awareness of their safety on

social networking sites.

According to the Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum, there are eight main threats, which are

"insufficient authentication controls, cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, phishing,

information leakage, injection flaws, information integrity, and insufficient anti-automation"

(Perez, 2009; Chi, 2011). In 2009, the Federal CIO Council stated that social media could face

different methods and techniques of cyber-attacks, which were Web Application, Spear Phishing,

and Social Engineering.

Problem statement

The masses lack information and understanding of the various information issues on

social media platforms. There has been a rise in the number of social media security threats over

the years, such as phishing attacks, which involves tricking an individual into revealing sensitive

information by imitating a specific website. Moreover, ransomware attacks prevent access to a

computer system and solicit money from their victims before granting access. Additional threats

include malware attacks, hacked accounts, and open user access. Most social media users are

vulnerable to social media attacks, thus exposing sensitive information to cybercriminals without

their knowledge. Besides, it has led to account hacking and loss of resources. Therefore, a need

to educate the public on how to carry run their business on social media platforms securely.

Literature review

Rose (2017) defines social media as "web-based services that allow individuals to

construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system." Cross (2018) expounds on

the definition of social media to include the democratization of information, transforming people
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from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to

a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers". Moreover,

according to Patel (2018), there are several types of social media platforms in use, which include

networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Patel (2018) defines social networking sites as

links that make it possible for individuals to interact with one another through the use of a

website. It also includes Blogs, Micro-blogs, virtual-world, Wikis, and Multi-media sharing sites.

Social media encompasses all the online platforms that allow people to create and share

personalized content with their connections.

According to Zhang (2018), it is evident that coupling RFID technology with social

media marketing poses a threat to loss of privacy. Zhang (2018) states that students use social

media to communicate with their colleagues and share their resources and personal experiences

in extracurricular activities. He argues that social media has founded a new perspective on

learning modes among educators in various institutions. Besides, he holds to the view that

several concerns arise with the use of social media as a learning aid. Thus, learning institutions

should emphasize the need for information security experts to facilitate the use of social media in

learning. Delerue (2017) highlights that there has been an expansion of the internet, which has

led to an increase in information transfer speed information, which facilitates the illegal sharing

of information.

Moreover, the extraction of data from social networks for personalized marketing has led

to SNS users' outrage raising privacy concerns (Cross, 2017). Gupta (2017) associates the

outrage to the lack of or insufficient infrastructure to manage privacy among social networks

besides the lack of expressiveness and difficulty of use. Besides, “none of the social networks

provide a flexible user-centric privacy management component"(Gupta 2017). Moreover, most

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users prefer easy passwords besides the various risks emanating from the given passwords. Patel

(2018) has a belief that adhering to security requirements is a cumbersome task due to the

absence of the various notations that express security requirements. Patel (2018) identified

sources of numerous threats which include people; who are the greatest threat, mobile phones,

passwords to ensure authentication and social engineering which involves tricking people.

However, social network companies and managers can mitigate the challenge by offering

education to people.

Research objectives

- To identify the risks that might attack personal data on social media accounts.

- To integrate safety and trustworthiness.

- To decrease privacy issues and increase user confidence.- To measure user's security

awareness.

- To show the rapid and perfect development of information technology.

Method

The study shall review the literature to clarify the research hypothesis. It shall collect

Data through an interview with cybercrime fighters who will explain on cybercrime, challenges,

and ways to protect social media accounts. Moreover, the researcher will distribute

questionnaires to King Faisal University female third-year students, College of Business

Administration, Department of Management Information System, to evaluate their level of

awareness on security and protection programs they use. Besides, it will identify other concerns

on social media security.

The tools are used to gain a clear insight on the topic. University students were chosen because

all of them have social media accounts and use the internet very often. At first, students will
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complete a questionnaire. The students will be chosen randomly. Then, the researcher will

interview with the professor to supplement the information.

The data will be analyzed by using the SPSS software. Recommendations will be given upon the

analysis

Resources

Information will be obtained from the Saudi Digital Library, Google Scholar, and the

Center Library at King Faisal University. An interview with cybercrime fighters will be

conducted. The questionnaire will be distributed after taking permission of the classes' professor.

Results

According to figure one, 79% of those who use social media are of the age between 21

years and 30 years. The least amount of those using social media is above 35 years of age.

Moreover, this is a clear sign of the highly targeted population in terms of social media use. The

second figure shows that most social media users began using social media one to three years

ago, at 60%. The least amount of people falls under individuals who started using social media in

more than three past years. Moreover, the level of social media security experience is

intermediate, according to figure 3, which is at 50%; hence most of the students have

intermediate knowledge regarding social media. Furthermore, most students spend more than

three hours on social media either for educational purposes or for entertainment.

According to the results, most of the students prefer entertainment when on social media

compared to other areas, and this is evident in figure 4 at a percentage of 50%. Most of the

students agree that they have encountered various social media threats such as malware,

spamming, and website failure. According to the research, it was clear that the most accountable
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individuals are social media websites, and a majority of the students felt that the sites play a role

in social media security. Nevertheless, most of the students thought that the level of protection

on social media has dropped tremendously from the reluctance of the various institutions

involved.

Discussion

The findings have established that most of the social media users are in their twenties.

Older people are more interested in traditional social networks than social media platforms.

Besides, younger people can quickly learn and even use various social media platforms.

Moreover, a majority of the students understand the effect of social media privacy across

different sectors in the world. Furthermore, they are aware of the various threats that exist when

using social media since a majority of students agreed on having some knowledge of social

media security threats. There is a need to create awareness on social media security threats and

their mitigation strategies.

Conclusion

There is a need for education on social media security in most institutions to equip the

students with strategies to deal with any threats from cybercriminals. There is a need for social

media users to understand the various privacy policies governing social media channels.

Moreover, users should ensure that their privacy settings are customized. Besides, other security

measures that social media users can employ include clicking links with caution to avoid being

hacked. Furthermore, individuals should be keen on the content they are share to prevent

revealing sensitive information to the public without their knowledge.

References
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Alqubaiti, Z. Y. (2016). The Paradox of Social Media Security: A Study of IT Students’

Perceptions versus Behavior on Using Facebook.

Zhang, Z., & Gupta, B. B. (2018). Social media security and trustworthiness: overview and new

direction. Future Generation Computer Systems, 86, 914-925.

Delerue, H., & He, W. (2017). A review of social media security risks and mitigation

techniques. Journal of Systems and Information Technology.

Cross, M. (2017). Social media security: Leveraging social networking while mitigating risk.

Newnes.

Patel, N., & Jasani, H. (2018). Social media security policies: Guidelines for

organizations. Issues in Information Systems, 11(1), 628-634.

Gupta, R., & Brooks, H. (2017). Using social media for global security. John Wiley & Sons.

Rose, C. (2017). The security implications of ubiquitous social media.

Appendices

QUESTIONNAIRE

1. How old are you

o Younger than 21

o Between 21-30 years

o Between 31-35 Years

o Older than 35 years

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2. When did you begin using social media?

o Less than one year ago

o 1-3 years ago

o More than three years ago

3. What is your level of social media security experience?

o Beginner

o Intermediate

o Advanced

4. How much time do you spend on social media?

o Less than 1 hour

o 1-3 hours

o More than 3 hours

5. What purpose do you use social media for?

o Entertainment

o Educational

o Business-related

o Others

6. Have you encountered the following security threats?

Spamming

o Agree

o Disagree

o Strongly Agree
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o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

Malware

o Agree

o Disagree

o Strongly Agree

o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

Website failure

o Agree

o Disagree

o Strongly Agree

o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

7. What percentage of accountability should each of these possess?

Users

o 80%

o 50%

o 10%

Government
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o 80%

o 50%

o 10%

Social media websites

o 80%

o 50%

o 10%

8. Security should be a concern when purchasing products via social media or online

o Agree

o Disagree

o Strongly Agree

o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

9. Security on the internet should be priority.

o Agree

o Disagree

o Strongly Agree

o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

10. Would you agree to use your credit card on the web?

o Agree

o Disagree
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o Strongly Agree

o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

11. Would you agree to conduct banking on the web without a bank statement

concerning the security procedures to be used?

o Agree

o Disagree

o Strongly Agree

o Strongly Disagree

o Neutral

12. How do you rate the level of security since you started using social media?

o 100%

o 80%

o 50%

o 10%

Figures

Fig. 1
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Age of Users

11% Between 21 and 30

5% Between 31 and 35
5% Older than 35
younger than 21

79%

Fig. 2

Social media use

less than 1yr

15%
25% 1-3 yrs ago
more than 3yrs ago

60%
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Fig. 3

Social Media Security Experience

Beginner
15%
Intermediate
35% Advanced

50%

Fig. 4
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Social Media Purpose

10% Entertainment
Educational
15%
Business
50% Others

25%