Quantifying Users' Beliefs about Software Updates

TL;DR

This study surveys users to quantify beliefs about software updates, identifying key factors influencing update reluctance, and offers recommendations to improve update compliance and enhance security.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative analysis of user beliefs about software updates, revealing key factors and guiding better update strategies.

Findings

Identified three main belief factors: update costs, necessity, and risks.

Quantified the prevalence of various user concerns about updates.

Offered practical recommendations for software developers to improve update compliance.

Abstract

Software updates are critical to the performance, compatibility, and security of software systems. However, users do not always install updates, leaving their machines vulnerable to attackers' exploits. While recent studies have highlighted numerous reasons why users ignore updates, little is known about how prevalent each of these beliefs is. Gaining a better understanding of the prevalence of each belief may help software designers better target their efforts in understanding what specific user concerns to address when developing and deploying software updates. In our study, we performed a survey to quantify the prevalence of users' reasons for not updating uncovered by previous studies. We used this data to derive three factors underlying these beliefs: update costs, update necessity, and update risks. Based on our results, we provide recommendations for how software developers can better improve users' software updating experiences, thereby increasing compliance and, with it, security.