Evaluation of information security awareness among Palestinian learners

This research aims to assess the level of Internet users’ security awareness among Palestinian learners. The study focuses on five fundamental security issues involving passwords, social media usage, email usage, security of mobile devices, and social engineering. A quantitative approach is employed in the study, where data was collected by means of pre-designed and tested questionnaires from a random sample of 200 participants. Data were collected, encoded, preprocessed and then analyzed using SPSS. Results emphasized the overall carelessness of Internet users in relation to security measures, knowledge and practices. Most of respondents did not try to gain any knowledge whatsoever by, for instance, attending an awareness course. The study found that users with higher level of knowledge in security awareness acted in a more professional way toward cyberthreats than those who did not have that knowledge.