Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic Circumstances on Cyber Hygiene of University Students

The covid-19 pandemic has motivated the cyber security research activities mainly at national and organizational level, but broader assessment of cyber security at individual level is undoubtedly lacking. Cyber security at individual level refers to humans and their personal cyber security practices that is called cyber hygiene. This study aims to evaluate the impact of the covid-19 pandemic circumstances on cyber hygiene outcomes, i.e., awareness, behavior, and knowledge. The intention was to estimate and compare the cyber hygiene of university students prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic. The results of the survey study indicate that covid-19 pandemic circumstances have caused the change of level of cyber hygiene awareness, behavior, and knowledge of university students. The covid-19 pandemic has improved all these cyber hygiene outcomes and that could be the consequence of intense use of digital space and mirroring of strict covid-19 pandemic protection measures. However, it is evident trend of cyber hygiene knowledge decline which coincides with covid-19 pandemic protection measures relaxation and less utilization of digital services. The findings of this study can be used to improve cyber hygiene worldwide and create a better extraordinary event response as digital space is expected to be increasingly used in future extraordinary circumstances.