Abstract

As more and more professional educators play a key role in the safe use of institutional data and student engagement in safe digital practices, it is more important than ever to understand the importance of effective cybersecurity awareness and defensive skills in the world of education. However, research cited in the literature indicates that there are some teachers who are still not adequately prepared to detect cyber threats, such as phishing, credential attacks, and data breaches, that can place educational environments in high-risk situations for security threats. This paper examines the value of a formalized program of cybersecurity awareness and defensive skills training that is specifically designed to be appropriate for professional educators. The quantitative research methodology was used, where a sample of 200 educators working in higher education institutions was used. The pre-test, post-test design was used to collect data, which is complemented with a standardized questionnaire assessing the awareness towards cybersecurity, capability to identify threats, and readiness to respond. The modules of the training intervention were threat detection, use of secure passwords, secure online communication, and incident response strategies. The results revealed a significant improvement of 32% in the scores of cybersecurity awareness after training compared with the scores before training. Furthermore, the respondents were found to have improved the ability to detect phishing attacks by 34.7%, and were found to have improved the ability to identify phishing attacks and to have confidence in their ability to implement defensive cybersecurity practices in the academic environment by 36.2%, to identify phishing attacks and to have confidence in their ability to implement defensive cybersecurity practices in the academic environment. Statistical analysis showed that the improvements were statistically significant (p < 0.05), which means that the training intervention was effective. These results underscore the need to incorporate continuous cybersecurity education into professional development programs for teachers to reduce the emergent digital threats and foster a secure academic ecosystem.