Towards Determining the Effect of Age and Educational Level on Cyber-Hygiene

TL;DR

This study investigates how age and education level influence cyber-hygiene knowledge and behavior among university students and staff in Nigeria, highlighting the need for targeted training to improve online safety practices.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on the impact of age and education on cyber-hygiene in a Nigerian university context, an area with limited prior research.

Findings

Many users lack good cyber-hygiene knowledge

Widespread internet use in higher education institutions

Need for organized cyber-hygiene training programs

Abstract

As internet related challenges increase such as cyber-attacks, the need for safe practises among users to maintain computer system's health and online security have become imperative, and this is known as cyber-hygiene. Poor cyber-hygiene among internet users is a very critical issue undermining the general acceptance and adoption of internet technology. It has become a global issue and concern in this digital era when virtually all business transactions, learning, communication and many other activities are performed online. Virus attack, poor authentication technique, improper file backups and the use of different social engineering approaches by cyber-attackers to deceive internet users into divulging their confidential information with the intention to attack them have serious negative implications on the industries and organisations, including educational institutions. Moreover, risks associated with these ugly phenomena are likely to be more in developing countries such as Nigeria. Thus, authors of this paper undertook an online pilot study among students and employees of University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a total of 145 responses were received and used for the study. The survey seeks to find out the effect of age and level of education on the cyber hygiene knowledge and behaviour of the respondents, and in addition, the type of devices used and activities they engage in while on the internet. Our findings show wide adoption of internet in institution of higher learning, whereas, significant number of the internet users do not have good cyber hygiene knowledge and behaviour. Hence, our findings can instigate an organised training for students and employees of higher institutions in Nigeria.