Abstract:

This study is aimed at determining the level of awareness of information security of students in the secondary education institutions associated with the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Northern Cyprus. The research has been used by the scan method. The study universe is made up of 9-10-11 and 12th-class students who are trained in the official schools affiliated with the relevant Ministry. In the study, the difficulty of reaching the whole universe, the time is limited and for economic reasons it is suitable for accessibility in six districts (Lefkoşa, Girne, Gazi Mağusa, Güzelyurt, Lefke, İskele) has been selected 28 schools. 1686 students participated in the study. The Information Security Awareness Scale for Higher Education Students implemented and obtained data were analyzed using the SPSS 22 program, developed by Chetinkaya and Keser (2016). The results of the study showed the statistics on the identifying findings in the form of arithmetic average, standard deviation, frequency and percentage. In order to determine the relationship between demographic information and information security level of awareness, the t-test for independent groups, the one-factor variance analysis-Anova test for independent groups and the Kruskal Wallis H-test for non-parametric non-related measurements have been performed. The study found that the level of awareness of information security in high school students was at a medium level (90 < 109.59 < 138). According to the average of the total points obtained from the subfactors of the scale, it is achieved that on each subfactor level consciousness is at the middle level. The achieved values are, respectively, the subfactor of personal data protection (15 < 19.27 < 23), the subfactor of attacks and threats (42 < 54.66 < 70) and the subfactor of privacy (25 < 35.66 < 40). It has been found that high school students do not make any significant differences according to information security awareness levels, the district in which they are studied, the type of school in which they are studied, the class level and the daily Internet use time variables. In addition, it has been found that the BGFÖ scores of high school students significantly vary by gender variable t(1684)=5.577, p<.01). Accordingly; the level of awareness of information security in male students (x̄Men=112.76) is higher than in female students (x̄Women=106.05). It has also been found that computer use training shows significant differences according to the receiving variable, t(1684)=2.084, p<.05). The level of awareness of information security for students who receive computer use training is higher (x ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄

Keywords: