Security analysis of conventional/electronic summative assessments

Abstract

Educational institutions worldwide face an ever increasing threat of malpractices during the conduct of summative assessments/examinations. Malpractices are perpetrated by students, controlling authority and the other external agents before, during and even after the assessments. Appropriate measures to deter and detect malpractices are essential to uphold the academic honesty and integrity of the assessment system. The identification of the source of the malpractice and the threat is utmost essential to plan the defence for curbing the malpractices. In this paper, we identify the threats encountered in the conventional/electronic assessments pertaining to the higher education and provide the comparative analysis of countermeasures adopted. We then provide the security analysis of the conventional/electronic assessments to understand the influence of the existing methods in attaining the required level of security to withstand the identified threats.