3 minute read
Kantar NZ Insights Applied - Online Security
Encouraging a joint focus on online security
A clever strategy is required to encourage consumers to translate their concern about online security into meaningful action.
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It’s no surprise that consumers want brands to interact with them in an open and honest way. One area where this has particularly come to the fore over the last decade is data handling and online security, driven by the detailed coverage of several high profile data breaches. Regardless of the causes, these security lapses can have a major effect on consumer levels of trust in a brand, which can in turn can have a significant impact on a business’s bottom line. For example, when internet service provider Yahoo! suffered a data breach in 2014 in which 500 million users had their personal details stolen, this reportedly wiped $350m off the company’s valuation prior to its sale.
Our own recent research suggests that news about security breaches may be leading to increased consumer concern about their own personal security. 46% of New Zealanders told us they are worried about how easily their home network could be hacked, rising to 58% of those aged 60+. While brands are expected to be reliable custodians of customer data, this can present a real challenge when the vast majority of data breaches are caused by human error (88% of the cases reported to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office in the last two years).
Consumers themselves therefore have an important role to play in securing their data, but our research suggests that New Zealanders could be much more diligent when it comes to taking steps to protect themselves.
Only half of New Zealanders are using anti-virus software, six in ten are using the same passwords for the different sites and services they use, and only two in ten are changing these passwords regularly. There’s no evidence to suggest that the heaviest internet users are more security savvy either, with similar levels of inactivity reported among this group.
So how can brands genuinely help in this area?
Certainly these findings suggest there may be a need for further education (when asked directly, only 36% of New Zealanders claimed to know ‘a lot’ about online security and the actions they can take to protect their information, while 50% would like to learn more). A more pressing concern, however, may be general complacency. Most of those who were not taking actions did recognise that they should do them, or do them more often.
Unfortunately, standard reminders are unlikely to work. Consumers are already bombarded with notifications and we’ve become primed to filter out anything that doesn’t immediately catch our attention. Prompts to review security settings are unlikely to stand out, especially for those who have not yet suffered the consequences of a security hack or virus. Equally, consumers don’t like being forced to do something at a time that doesn’t suit them, so processes which interrupt a browsing experience are also unlikely to yield a positive response.
This means that brands wishing to promote good online security behaviour and gain any reputational benefit need a different strategy to help the message cut through. One successful example of how consumers can be persuaded to adopt positive behaviour through more subtle behavioural nudges comes from a campaign run by Fire and Emergency NZ in which the desired behaviour (checking smoke alarms are clean and operating properly) was linked to another relatively mundane task that people were more likely to complete (altering their clocks at the beginning and end of Daylight Savings Time). By effectively piggy-backing on established behaviour, the campaign had its desired impact: post-testing showed a clear increase in testing smoke alarms among those who saw the campaign.
This approach may offer clues of how best to prompt positive online security behaviour. It is likely to require a cleverly articulated message delivered with the right tone, but achieving this could lead to a considerable reputational boost for the organisation involved.
