Cyber Security Awareness among Social Media Users: Case Study in German-Malaysian Institute (GMI)

The use of social media has increased among the Malaysian. The most popular social media sites that are currently being used are Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp and Instagram. The existence of this unlimited boundless social site has also been associated with an increase in cyber crime rates. Based on the cases that have taken place, most cases are due to lack of awareness of cyber security applied to social media users. Social media users are unaware of the cybercrime such as cyberbully, cyber spying, phishing and scam that may arise from social media. Therefore, a study aimed at measuring the level of awareness of social media users and identifying factors affecting the awareness of social media users regarding cyber security, developing a proposed model based on factors influence the level of awareness as well as validating dand purifying improvements of the proposed model. In this study, online surveys were used during the data collection process. A total of 231 GMI candidates have been involved in the survey. The data obtained through the survey were analyzed using SPSS statistical applications. As the result, it showed average mean of knowledge factor (3.84), environmental factor (2.86) and attitude factor (3.31) which showed that respondents had moderate level of awareness. The findings from the correlation test show that the three factors have correlation with each other. The attitude factor and its correlative environment factor is 0.234 which is moderate weak, while the environmental factor and its correlation attitude factor is 0.201 which is medium weak and the correlation between knowledge factor and environment factor is 0.357 which is moderately strong. This shows that each factor has correlation to each other As a result; a proposed model that contains research factors has been proposed which are attitude, environment and knowledge. Hopefully this study will benefit the users of social media and certain organizations to devise an effective strategy after the factors that affects the awareness of cyber security was identified as well as the model will be reffered to on enhancing cyber security awareness and will indirectly reduce cyber crime rates in Malaysia.