Cybersecurity competence of older adult users of mobile devices

Abstract: This work reports on a cross-sectional study on device proficiency, support availability and cybersecurity competence of older adult users of smartphones and/or tablets. Results indicate that cybersecurity competence is associated with both device proficiency and support availability although the variance explained is relatively low. There were no differences in cybersecurity competence between users and non-users of either mobile devices. Users of both smartphones and tablets had significantly higher device proficiency than non-users. Users of tablets had significantly higher support availability than non-users while there were no significant differences between users and non-users of smartphones.