International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2022, pp. 572~584 ISSN: 2088-8708, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v12i1.pp572-584  572 Journal homepage: http://ijece.iaescore.com An assessment of cybersecurity awareness level among Northeastern University students in Nigeria Adamu Abdullahi Garba 1,2 , Maheyzah Muhamad Siraj 2 , Siti Hajar Othman 2 1 Department of Computer Science, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria 2 School of Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Mar 23, 2021 Revised Jul 15, 2021 Accepted Aug 2, 2021 The world economy today has adopted the internet as a medium of transactions, this has made many organizations use the internet for their daily activities. With this, there is an urgent need to have knowledge in cybersecurity and also how to defend critical assets. The objective of this paper is to identify the level of cybersecurity awareness of students in Northeastern Nigeria. A quantitative approach was used for data collection and cyberbully, personal information, internet banking, internet addiction, and Self-protection were the items ask for cybersecurity awareness level identification. Descriptive analysis was performed for initial result findings using SPSS and OriginPro for graphical design. the preliminary result shows of the students have some basic knowledge of cybersecurity in an item like internet banking, while other items like cyberbully, self-protection and, internet addiction result show moderate awareness, the students' participation based on gender, males constitute 77.1% i.e. (N=340) and females constitute 22.9% i.e. (N=101). Future research would concentrate on designing awareness programs that would increase the level of their awareness especially the students in the Northeastern part of Nigeria. Keywords: Cybersecurity awareness Cybersecurity knowledge Information security University students This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Adamu Abdullahi Garba School of Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Johor Bahru, Malaysia Email: adamugaidam@gmail.com 1. INTRODUCTION Technological innovation has created opportunities for companies to carry out online transactions through the internet, which are constantly growing worldwide. For cybercriminals, the internet has become a key medium to perfume several cybercrime-related activities. Studies have shown that the lack of understanding of cybersecurity attacks and threats is one of the driving factors leading to the growing number of internet- related attacks [1]. Cybercrime was defined by researchers as any criminal activity in which computers or other network devices are used to conduct illegal activities as a tool or target [2]. Emails are common means by which attackers target their victims to lunch cyber-attacks like phishing, IP spoofing, social engineering, denial of service attack, and child pornography. Today, online chat forums, web searching websites, and emails are common. According to [3], Africa is becoming more internet-connected than ever before; for example, In Nigeria, alone internet users have reached 99.5 million in 2020, the figure is projected to grow to 131.7 million by 2023. It is expected that cybercrime rates will increase simultaneously. Over the decade, cybersecurity attacks in Nigeria have become regular activities that pose a bigger threat to the economy, national security, and damage the nation's integrity. The Globe Cyber Security Agenda [4] has developed security countermeasures and techniques to curb cybersecurity attacks, and these strategies are planned to be applied internationally in the campaign to curb cybercrime activities. However,