Cybersecurity in Skills Development and Leadership

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) enables organisations absorb state-ofthe- art knowledge from external sources, and develop skills that promote productivity, competitiveness and organizational learning. This study, completed as part of project ECHO efforts, aims to understand how cybersecurity is seen by PhD students specializing in it. The participants (n = 25) were asked to discuss what is cybersecurity, its elements, and users. The Typeform survey tool was used to collect, store, and analyse this data. The results indicate that successful cybersecurity provides multi-level protection of organisational infrastructures, personal and organisational data, and financial interests of organisations. Failure to protect these may result in negative reputation, financial, ethical, and operational impacts. Human users may be the weakest link in the system, which should be seriously taken into account when deploying cybersecurity measures and administrative user privileges. Users need to be educated in cybersecurity and be aware of threats and new developments and attacker tactics, in particular in the case of social engineering attacks. Basic technical knowledge and capabilities to detect and appropriately report attacks are needed for all levels of ICT users