Antecedents and Consequences of Cybersecurity Awareness: A Case Study for Turkish Maritime Sector

Abstract

Cybersecurity awareness has become an important issue in maritime transportation as well as in other sectors. In this paper, after analyzing maritime cybersecurity literature, it is aimed to understand the factors of antecedents and consequences of cybersecurity awareness in maritime domain by taking Turkish Maritime Sector as a case study. Structural Equation Modeling is used for understanding the factors by validating a questionnaire data from 211 maritime employees who graduated from the Department of Marine Transportation Management Engineering and Marine Engineering in Turkey. It is found that (a) education is a significant factor in enhancing the maritime cybersecurity awareness of employee's and their attitudes towards cybersecurity; (b) cybersecurity incidents or experiences significantly influence employee's cybersecurity awareness and their behavior; (c) maritime cybersecurity awareness significantly affects secure user behavior. In addition, results showed that rules and policies with information sharing do not have any significant effect on cybersecurity awareness and on the development of secure employee behavior.