Assessing the influential factors of cybersecurity awareness in Malaysia during the pandemic outbreak: A structural equation modeling

Abstract

The advanced growth of communication technology today greatly has brought benefits in many ways, but it has indirectly led to the exposure of data privacy and safety of end users to the outsiders. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all citizens are required to stay at home and most of their times have been used on the internet for their leisure, study and work purposes. The massive use of internet lead to cybercriminal like scam, fraud, hacking and cyber bullying. It has been reported that the senior adult is the most affected group. Using the Information Security Awareness Model (ISACM) and the Situation Awareness Cybersecurity Education Model (SAOCE), this study aims to develop a cybersecurity awareness model that can assist the elderly from attacks in cyberspace. Methodologically, this paper is quantitative in nature and recruits 300 senior adults from age 50 until above 60 years via convenience sampling technique. We identified three factors namely organization, social and individual influencing cybersecurity awareness. The result revealed that organization factors significantly related to cybersecurity awareness with value of β=0.151, p=0.025, meanwhile for social and individual factors are found less significant to cybersecurity awareness with values β=-0.066, p=0.328 and β=0.045, p=0.463 respectively. With the development of cybersecurity awareness model, we are confident that our model can contribute to the body of knowledge within the cybersecurity context.