Analisis Tingkat Kesadaran Keamanan Siber Mahasiswa STMIK Pesat Nabire Provinsi Papua Tengah terhadap Ancaman Phishing dan Malware

Abstract

The expansion of digital services in higher education has increased students' dependence on the internet for accessing academic information, communicating, storing data, and using application-based services. These benefits are accompanied by higher exposure to phishing and malware threats. This study analyzes the cybersecurity awareness level of STMIK Pesat Nabire students in Central Papua Province toward phishing and malware threats using pre-test and post-test measurements. A quantitative approach with a pre-experimental one-group pre-test and post-test design was applied. The instrument consisted of 15 Likert-scale items grouped into three dimensions: phishing threat awareness, malware threat awareness, and user self-protection behavior. Based on participant-name and student-number matching between the pre-test and post-test sheets, 120 respondents had complete paired data. The findings show that the mean cybersecurity awareness score increased from 2.83 in the pre-test to 3.89 in the post-test. The increase was statistically significant at the 5 percent level (t = 22.241; p < 0.001), with a strong effect size (Cohen's dz = 2.03). The largest improvement occurred in the malware threat dimension, followed by phishing threat awareness and user self-protection behavior. These findings indicate that practical cybersecurity education can strengthen students' awareness, particularly in recognizing unsafe software, suspicious links, and secure account practices. However, self-protection practices such as MFA/2FA, VPN use, and password manager adoption require continuous reinforcement.