October 17, 2017 By Larry Loeb 2 min read

Baby boomers tend to pay more attention to cybersecurity issues than millennials, according to a recent survey — but not by much.

The “2017 Consumer Cybersecurity Study,” conducted by payment technology solutions company First Data, evaluated the cybersecurity awareness of different age groups and sought to discover what issues each demographic considered important.

Is Cybersecurity Awareness Generational?

One of the biggest awareness gaps the study identified was widespread password reuse, a behavior that can exacerbate the effects of a data breach, ATM Marketplace reported. In fact, 70 percent of boomers said they reuse passwords on sites and apps, while a whopping 82 percent of millennials reported that they practice the same behavior.

The two groups also exhibited differences in the way the change their passwords. While 32 percent of boomers reported that they changed their passwords only when forced to do so, that figure is as high as 42 percent for millennials.

Both boomers and millennials are wary that their online activities could expose them to attacks. Forty-nine percent of millennials responded that they had concerns about their online security posture after recent cyberattacks, while 65 percent of boomers expressed the same unease.

The areas that produce this anxiety, however, vary slightly between the two age groups. For example, boomers seem to have more faith in bank security than millennials — 19 percent consider an online bank attack to be unlikely, compared to 14 percent of millennials.

Boomers More Cautious With Enterprise Security

Survey respondents from both age groups appear to understand enterprise security fairly well: About 72 percent of boomers avoid storing work-related data on their personal devices, compared to 69 percent of millennials.

The study also suggested that older employees are more likely to consult with IT before downloading software (86 percent) than their millennial counterparts (75 percent). Furthermore, 34 percent of baby boomers consider how their online activities affect their enterprise. Only 21 percent of millennials exhibit the same awareness.

First Data’s report offered insight into the subtle differences between the two age groups, but these variances are not definitive. While boomers appear somewhat more cautious than millennials, both demographics must work to increase their level of awareness to protect both personal and enterprise data.

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