Cybersecurity Awareness among the Online Students: A Case of Nepal Open University

Abstract

This paper assesses cybersecurity awareness levels and associated practices by the online students of Nepal Open University (NOU) amidst the increasing cybersecurity threat challenges in e-learning platforms. Descriptive research design has been utilized with the collection of information from 160 students using a Google Form questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale. Statistical tools such as descriptive statistics, a one-sample t-test, and correlation analysis have been used for analyzing the data, where reliability of the data has been ensured by means of Cronbach’s alpha (0.751-0.875). It is identified that the cybersecurity awareness is moderately high (mean=3.72), e-learning engagement is quite high (mean=3.87), and policy compliance is also quite high (mean=3.82). On the other hand, the institutional technical security infrastructure (mean=2.92) and cybersecurity training (mean=2.52) have gotten very low levels of acceptance. In correlation analysis, it is found that there is no significant relationship between cybersecurity awareness and institutional measures (r=+0.154, p=0.052), which is highly critical.