Millennials really do care about cybersecurity

Half of young voters believe there hasn’t been enough discussion of cybersecurity in the current election campaign and a small majority say a candidate’s stance on the issue would influence their decision whether to support them.

The data comes from a Zogby poll released by Raytheon and the U.S. government’s “Stop. Think. Connect.” campaign as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

For the survey as a whole, Zogby surveyed 3,779 adults ages 18–26 in Australia, Germany, Japan, Jordan, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States. For the U.S. data reported here, there was 1,007 respondents.

This increasing awareness appears to correlate with a growing number of young people (nearly half of all respondents) who have heard news about cyberattacks in the past year; and with larger numbers saying they had access to cybersecurity activities like training.

The number of young adults who said they had read, heard or seen news about a cyberattack in the past year rose by 15 percentage points from 2015 to 2016 — from 33 percent to 48 percent. In the U.S., the figure nearly doubled from 36 percent in 2015 to 64 percent this year.

Globally, the survey found significant increases in the numbers of young people who said they had access to cybersecurity activities like training or competitions. The proportion of respondents saying such cyber programs were available to them increased by 26 percent to 68 percent, compared with 54 percent last year. The jump was largely driven by respondents in the U.S. and Europe, with much smaller increases in Asia and the Middle East.

There is a significant gender gap here: Nearly twice as many men as women say they know about such activities.