Cybersecurity Awareness Among College Students

This paper presents a research framework for studying cybersecurity awareness among college students, focusing on online safety knowledge, digital habits, and risk awareness. Students regularly use digital platforms for education, communication, online payments, social media, and other activities, which may expose them to cybersecurity threats such as phishing, weak passwords, account compromise, unsafe downloads, privacy leakage, and social engineering attacks. The paper proposes a questionnaire-based methodology to assess students’ understanding of phishing, password security, multi-factor authentication, software updates, privacy settings, and safe network usage. It describes a systematic approach to collecting responses, analysing knowledge and reported practices, identifying awareness gaps, and recommending targeted cybersecurity education activities. The study emphasises voluntary participation, informed consent, participant privacy, and the use of verified survey data. Since actual survey data have not been provided in this draft, no empirical findings are claimed. The proposed framework can support future college-level cybersecurity awareness research and educational initiatives.