Abstract
Security and privacy issues are a major concern to users of social network sites (SNS). These issues range from unauthorized access to personal information to cyber bullying. Previous researchers have been exerting different perspectives including technical, psychological and law to study privacy and security issues. However, the issues of security and privacy seems to be ongoing. In view of the security threats and privacy issues of student using SNS, this study sets out to examine the security awareness, preparedness towards cyber-attacks and security behaviors among IT and Non-IT postgraduate students. As such, 400 postgraduate students were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. The findings reported in this study revealed that IT students have significantly high security awareness and behavior as compared to Non-IT students. However, there is no significant difference between the preparedness towards cyber-attacks of both IT and Non-IT students. Finally, this study demonstrates that there is a significant relationship between preparedness towards cyber-attacks and security behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications of this study highlight the importance of security awareness and understanding of technical-know how in preempting security attacks among SNS users.
Highlights
The popularity of Social Network Sites (SNS) continues to increase among university students leading to a serious concern in security and privacy issues
One of the most significant of the implications is that this study provides an empirical evidence to the IT-related expertise of the important role in protecting SNS users against cyber-attacks
This study proffers a bold theoretical implication to explain that devolving more personal information on SNS does not increase the vulnerability of users to security attacks
Summary
The popularity of Social Network Sites (SNS) continues to increase among university students leading to a serious concern in security and privacy issues. Scholar like (Whitman, 2003) have categorized SNS information security threats into human errors, compromises to intellectual property, privacy espionage or trespass, information extortion, sabotage or vandalism, theft, software attacks, forces of nature, quality of service aberration from service providers, hardware and software failures and technological desuetude. Security threats such as human error, compromises to intellectual property, information extortion, sabotage are vandalism are often caused by users’ negligence and errors. Not many users have the awareness of protecting themselves against information security threats or have the preparedness to take themselves out of cyber-attacks (Kim, 2013)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
