A Study on the Impact of Gender, Employment Status, and Academic Discipline on Cyber-Hygiene: A Case Study of University of Nigeria, Nsukka

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped amplify the importance of Cyber-hygiene. As the reliance on the Internet and IT services increased during the pandemic, this in turn has introduced a new wave of criminal activities such as cybercrimes. With the emergent of COVID-19 which lead to increase in cyber-attack incidents, the pattern, and sophistication, there is an urgent need to carry out an exploratory study to find out users’ level of cyber-hygiene knowledge and culture based on gender, employment status, and academic discipline. Above this, with many organizations providing for dual mode work pattern or remote and in-person as the pandemic subsides, this study still remains very relevant and hence the aim to investigate the cyber-hygiene knowledge and compliance of university students and employees of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). In addition, it attempts to verify the relationship between demographics such as gender, employment status, and academic discipline on cyber-hygiene culture among students and employees. The sample population is made of employees and students of UNN, where the employees are either academic staff or non-academic staff. The sample size consisted of three hundred and sixteen (316) participants, one hundred and eight-seven (187) of whom were females and one hundred and twenty-nine (129) were males. The results offer some useful insight on cyber-hygiene practices at the university.