The interest in new technologies and techniques to fight cyber crime is increasing almost as fast as cyber crime itself, but unfortunately this seems to be not enough, since according to statistics users’ interest in security is not supported by a real awareness.

US universities are concerned  about the creation of effective IT security educational programs, as for the University of Texas at San Antonio where it will be opened a new computer-security research institute that one day could protect users from theft or identity theft. The institute will be headed by an internationally recognized scholar, Ravi Sandhu, and it will be partially granted   by  the Texas Emerging Technology Fund  that  has just allocated  $3.5 million  for this project .

But Universities cannot wipe off cyber crime, that is actually increasing, as testified by the number of articles about cyber-crime that are published every day on “Tech-pages” in newspapers from all over the world: internet users are constantly under digital threat.

To this discomforting increase in criminal activities, does not correspond an adequate awareness among users that are quite unwilling to keep informed and to keep their systems updated.

A British study reported that , for example, despite over 1 in 10 British people experienced online frauds, fewer than half of the UK's Internet users believe they are responsible for protecting personal information online .

Almost the same situation as in the rest of Europe and everywhere else in the world: data could slightly be different but the lack of security awareness is always the same.

In order to prevent the damages brought about users’ carelessness, a number of security programs were implemented by institutions. For instance, in Australia, local police fraud squads were founded to warn residents about new scams for ID frauds and few days ago, in the USA, the lawyer and senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California Chris Jay Hoofnagle, proposed to oblige institutions like banks and credit card companies, and payment firms like PayPal, to report their internal figures on fraud and identity theft publicly .

The problem is that even if Institutions will work in synergy to develop new measures to improve Internet users’ security, there will be always vulnerable elements, since nothing can protect people from their own carelessness.

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