Assessment of Awareness and Preparedness of Cyber cafe Internet Users to deal with threats of cyber crimes: A case of Nairobi County

Abstract

The internet was originally designed as an open system for trustworthy users, yet with its rapid growth rate, it has become vulnerable to cyber crime. Awareness and Preparedness are considered key determinant of online behavior of internet end user. The online behavior in turn determine the frequency of cyber attacks an individual is likely to experience whenever he goes online. Unlike in the corporate world where there are policies, rules and regulations that governs how one is expected to behave when going online the same does not happen when we come to internet users within the general public. There are no rules governing how the general public accesses the net at homes or within cyber cafes. This makes members of the general public easy preys of cyber criminals. While much research has been undertaken in ways of promoting cyber security awareness among employees in organizations, very little has been done to promote the same awareness within the general public. At the same time as far as the researcher was able to ascertain very little research has been undertaken to gauge the level of awareness and preparedness in dealing with threats of computer crimes both within the general public and in the corporate world. This study is a descriptive one that aims at assessing computer crime awareness and preparedness among computer end users in cyber café within Nairobi County in Kenya. A descriptive survey design was considered the most appropriate in this research since the researcher had no intention of influencing the outcome of the research. This study focuses on the internet users within the general public, and tries to determine the level of their awareness about cyber crimes and also their level of preparedness in dealing with threats of these crimes. To assess both the level of awareness and preparedness among the internet users, a scale was developed using the various constructs that were adopted for purposes of data collection. The study reveals that very high levels of awareness and preparedness exist among the internet users within the country. But at the same time quite a large number of those who were surveyed took a neutral position in most the constructs that were being used to assess the level of awareness and preparedness; this might be a pointer to the fact that the level being deduced from our research using the scale developed might not be as high as being portrayed.