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Top1. Introduction
Internet security is a broad terminology that has been used to describe all security-related steps employed when engaging in any activity and or transaction through the internet and is considered a part of the broader issue of computer and cyber security (Kaspersky, 2022). Cybersecurity has been defined as all the measures adopted to protect the cyber environment. It includes employing tools, adopting policies and concepts on security, taking security safeguarding measures, actions, guidelines, training, and all necessary approaches that seek to protect individual and organizational assets (ITU, 2022; Media Defense, 2020). All these steps become necessary because criminal activities are perpetrated against individuals or organizations by a computer network or through the internet – Cybercrime (Media Defense, 2020). Cybercriminal activities vary greatly and include cyberwarfare, cyberterrorism, cybervandalism, social engineering, etc. Cyberwarfare, for example, is defined as the strategies or steps taken by an organization or a nation to attack another country or organization’s computer network systems with the aim of damaging, destroying, or disrupting such infrastructure by using weapons such as denial-of-service (DOS) or viruses (Fortinet, 2022). It may take the form of espionage, sabotage, economic disruption, civil or even military. A classic example is Russia’s viper malware attack on Ukraine in February 2022 during Russia’s attack on Ukraine (Fortinet, 2022) or Chinese hackers stealing millions of information from the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015 (Nakashima, 2015). Other forms, such as cyberterrorism, involve using computer-related technology to cause destruction, harm, or damage in order to coerce a civilian population to be able to influence a policy direction by a government or its activity (CEPOL, 2018) or cyber vandalism: the digital form of causing destruction or damage (Hendricks, 2022), all pose great harm to individuals, organizations, and governments. Cybercrime revenue, for example, was estimated to be worth $1.5 trillion in 2018 (McGuire, 2018), with some scholars estimating global cybercrime cost to individuals, organizations, and governments to reach $6 trillion by 2021 (Jansen van Vuuren, Leenen, & Pieterse, 2020), a depiction of how lucrative it has become.
Adopting strategies to deal with all cyber-related concerns involves a holistic approach from the national to the individual level. Dealing with this menace on all levels rests on certain critical components, particularly the state of cyber awareness across all sectors and the readiness to ensure cyber hygienic practices. Cyber awareness, defined as the level of awareness and understanding possessed by end-users on cybersecurity best practices and the potential cyber threats faced by the individual, organization, or the nation (Mimecast, 2022) is critical to this fight. The power of cyber awareness in cybersecurity is an enormous one, as boosting the level of cyber awareness at all levels helps a great deal in tackling cyber security threats (Mimecast, 2022). Although the term cybersecurity is a global phenomenon and thus well known, the level of public awareness of cyber threats issues and the visibility associated with it is very limited (Brujin & Janssen, 2017). Consequently, the poor level of cyber awareness directly affects the cyber hygiene practices of the end-user.