Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the global economy and are increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats due to constrained resources and limited cybersecurity expertise. Despite the availability of international cybersecurity guidance, SMEs struggle to identify and mitigate their cyber risks effectively. This study addresses this gap by developing an accessible, SME-focused cyber risk assessment tool that simplifies cybersecurity for non-experts. Through a comprehensive review of existing risk assessment frameworks and iterative collaboration with SMEs, we designed a user-friendly tool. Piloted with Irish SMEs, the tool provided valuable insights into the current cybersecurity landscape, revealing critical vulnerabilities in areas such as data protection, where 67% of participants said they did not test their backups, and incident preparedness, where 83% of participants said they would not know what to do if a cyber incident occurred. Our tool not only evaluates cyber risk but also enhances SME awareness by guiding them through key cybersecurity considerations. This study demonstrates that an intuitive risk assessment tool can empower SMEs to strengthen their cyber resilience, ensuring more businesses can proactively protect themselves against evolving threats.

As digital services increasingly replace traditional analogue systems, ensuring that older adults are not left behind is critical to fostering inclusive access. This study explores how digital educators support older adults in developing essential digital skills, drawing insights from interviews with $34$ educators in Ireland. These educators, both professional and volunteer, offer instruction through a range of formats, including workshops, remote calls, and in-person sessions. Our findings highlight the importance of personalized, step-by-step guidance tailored to older adults' learning needs, as well as fostering confidence through hands-on engagement with technology. Key challenges identified include limited transportation options, poor internet connectivity, outdated devices, and a lack of familial support for learning. To address these barriers, we propose enhanced public funding, expanded access to resources, and sustainable strategies such as providing relevant and practical course materials. Additionally, innovative tools like simulated online platforms for practicing digital transactions can help reduce anxiety and enhance digital literacy among older adults. This study underscores the vital role that digital educators play in bridging the digital divide, creating a more inclusive, human-centered approach to digital learning for older adults.

Authentication security advice is given with the goal of guiding users and organisations towards secure actions and practices. In this article, a taxonomy of 270 pieces of authentication advice is created, and a survey is conducted to gather information on the costs associated with following or enforcing the advice. Our findings indicate that security advice can be ambiguous and contradictory, with 41% of the advice collected being contradicted by another source. Additionally, users reported high levels of frustration with the advice and identified high usability costs. The study also found that end-users disagreed with each other 71% of the time about whether a piece of advice was valuable or not. We define a formal approach to identifying security benefits of advice. Our research suggests that cost-benefit analysis is essential in understanding the value of enforcing security policies. Furthermore, we find that organisation investment in security seems to have better payoffs than mechanisms with high costs to users.

Leaks from password datasets are a regular occur-rence. An organization may defend a leak with reassurances that just a small subset of passwords were taken. In this paper we show that the leak of a relatively small number of text-based passwords from an organizations' stored dataset can lead to a further large collection of users being compromised. Taking a sample of passwords from a given dataset of passwords we exploit the knowledge we gain of the distribution to guess other samples from the same dataset. We show theoretically and empirically that the distribution of passwords in the sample follows the same distribution as the passwords in the whole dataset. We propose a function that measures the ability of one distribution to estimate another. Leveraging this we show that a sample of passwords leaked from a given dataset, will compromise the remaining passwords in that dataset better than a sample leaked from another source.