Ringing into the next social generation of online

BT recently conducted a survey amongst 1000 of its staff in a bid to gauge their attitudes and approaches to online security.

What caught my eye about this survey is the simple fact that going online is an everyday occurrence and it made me think about just how far we have come with the internet. Most of us are reliant on the internet for our shopping, keeping up with friends, news feeds, information sharing, booking movie tickets and so on – the internet has shaped our social habits. BT’s survey highlighted that less than 1 per cent of respondents had not shopped online in the last twelve months!

The most interesting stat for me however, was the fact that two thirds of respondents were very or extremely concerned about the security of their personal details online. Also, 91% of respondents said they are interested in a single, stronger authentication method that would work for numerous online services. Interesting also that it’s the young (18 to 24 year olds), and the old(er) (over 45s) who are the most anxious about online security.

It’s true that fraudsters still manage to hack their way through the virtual walls of online security and we are still struggling to prevent online fraud even after all these years.

So where’s the next social trend going to come from? It’s quite clear that the mobile phone is already shaping our consumer habits to a great extent – it’s the next generation of online and that’s fantastic. What I do hope however, is that we learn some lessons from the take-up of the online channel and more quickly realise to the need to better secure our data. It’s encouraging to see that consumers are gradually wising up to being smarter with their data, as the BT survey highlighted. To safeguard consumers’ interests, security needs to be put at the heart of the mobile infrastructure from the outset.