Mazurek and Redmiles Create Video to Educate Users on Cybersecurity Best Practices

Two security experts in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) have produced an “edutainment” video to educate users about the importance of software updating in a simple and relatable way.

Michelle Mazurek, an assistant professor of computer science with appointments in MC2 and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, and Elissa Redmiles, a second-year doctoral student in computer science, worked with George Mason University’s Film and Video Studies Program to create the video.

The 3-minute video is the result of an experiment carried out by Mazurek, Redmiles and a team of UMD computer science masters and doctoral students.

Their work shows that users often struggle to stay digitally secure. Despite a multitude of security advice, they find it challenging to identify threats and develop appropriate behaviors to prevent potential attacks on their computers and smart phones, especially in complex domains such as software updating.

The researchers say their work seeks to improve the efficacy of security advice by exploring a new approach: entertaining educational videos or “edutainment.”

The team conducted a participatory-design study to develop a software-updating edutainment video, which was then evaluated in a controlled experiment.

Preliminary evidence revealed that their edutainment video increases users’ likelihood of updating their software more than traditional text-based security advice, suggesting that edutainment holds promise for digital-security education and that edutainment videos may eventually become viable replacements for corporate-security videos and text-based security advice.

Watch the video here.