Security behaviors on social network sites used for academic purposes: a comparison of security preparedness and awareness among IT and non-IT postgraduate students

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 selfadministered 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