Employment status and cybersecurity behaviors

Abstract

Cybersecurity behaviors of employees are major contributors of cyber attacks in organizations. It is important to investigate an employee's cybersecurity posture within an organization. Using our cybersecurity behavior model, we surveyed employees from different organizations on their perceptions on various cybersecurity-related psychological variables. We study whether employment status differentiates how cybersecurity is perceived and cybersecurity behavior is conducted. We use point bi-serial correlation to evaluate the strength of the relationships between employment status (i.e., full-time vs. part-time) and psychological variables (e.g., perceived severity of threat, perceived vulnerability, etc.). Our results show that full-time employees perceive vulnerability higher than those of part-time employees.