Cyber Security Behavior of IT Students: An Example of EMU

Due to technological innovations, the world has changed and everything such as information is easily accessible in electronic and digital format. This has revealed the importance of the concept of cyber security. The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the cyber security behaviors of Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) Information Technology (IT) undergraduate students. In the study, cyber security behaviors were examined according to 5 sub-dimensions: malware, password usage, phishing, social engineering, and online scam. In addition, this study determines the relationship between cyber security behavior of IT students and their gender. Cyber Security Behavior (CSB) Scale (Muniandy, Muniandy, & Samsudin, 2017) was used as a data collection tool in the research. The study was carried out using the quantitative research method and survey model. Participants of the study consisted of 255 IT undergraduate students who enrolled at EMU in the spring semester of 2018- 2019. The results of this research show that IT undergraduate students have generally low cyber security behaviors. In addition, when all sub-dimensions were evaluated, it was determined that IT undergraduate students had low cyber security behaviors in the sub dimensions of malware, password usage, social engineering, and online scam. Only, IT undergraduate students had high cyber security behavior in the phishing sub dimension. In addition, IT undergraduate students had the lowest cyber security behavior in the social engineering sub-dimension, and the highest cyber security behavior in the phishing sub-dimension. Subsequently, the findings of this research show that a significant difference exists between IT students’ cyber security behavior and their gender. Male IT undergraduate students demonstrated higher cyber security behaviors than female’s IT undergraduate students in 6 Items, while female IT students demonstrated higher cyber security behaviors than male IT students in 2 Items out of 50 items.