Date of Award
Fall 12-14-2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT)
Department
Information Technology
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Dr. Lei Li
Second Advisor
Dr. Svetlana Peltsverger
Third Advisor
Dr. Kyung Hun Jung
Abstract
Social media plays an essential role in the modern society, enabling people to be better connected to each other and creating new opportunities for businesses. At the same time, social networking sites have become major targets for cyber-security attacks due to their massive user base. Many studies investigated the security vulnerabilities and privacy issues of social networking sites and made recommendations on how to mitigate security risks. Users are an integral part of any security mix. In this thesis, we explore the relationship between users’ security perceptions and their actual behavior on social networking sites. Protection motivation theory (PMT), initially developed to study fear appeals, has been widely used to examine people’s behavior in information security domains. We propose that PMT theory can also be adapted to explain and predict social media users’ behaviors that have security implications. We use a web-based survey to measure users’ security awareness on social networking sites and collect data on their actual behavior.