With the increase in the number of employees working remotely from home following the COVID-19 pandemic, cyberattacks have grown in quantity and strength. While companies invest tremendous resources in technical defense practices and protection tools, the main weak link is still the human factor. The current study aims to provide theoretical and empirical evidence of the antecedents that contribute to active cyber defense as well as cyber risk behaviors. Based on a sample of 338 employees who worked from home or on-site during and after COVID-19, we examined the effects of organizational training on employee defense behaviors. The results of the current study suggest that the workplace and the amount of confidence in the defense measures play an important role in contributing to cyber risk behavior. Therefore, it is crucial that managers raise employee awareness of the hazards and educate them on the different defense methods that they can apply.

Data science is considered to be a complex domain. It involves the skillful implementation of a multitude of data analysis and interpretation methods to reach managerial and operational decisions. For this reason, it poses a number of challenges to students in all disciplines, especially in the social sciences. The present study highlights these challenges through the analysis of 4 complementary research works that are based on 3 instruments: a scientific corpus, surveys, and data science job offers posted on LinkedIn-Israel. The study’s findings indicate that although data science is perceived to be an important domain that exerts a high influence on our society, social sciences’ students still do not have sufficient skills to cope with the challenges it poses. The study suggests equipping students with the skills and qualifications necessary for big data analysis through the design of adequate academic programs. The current article discusses these findings and their implications.

Cyber-attacks represent a potential threat to information security. As rates of data usage and internet consumption continue to increase, cyber awareness turned to be increasingly urgent. This study focuses on the relationships between cyber security awareness, knowledge and behavior with protection tools among individuals in general and across four countries: Israel, Slovenia, Poland and Turkey in particular. Results show that internet users possess adequate cyber threat awareness but apply only minimal protective measures usually relatively common and simple ones. The study findings also show that higher cyber knowledge is connected to the level of cyber awareness, beyond the differences in respondent country or gender. In addition, awareness is also connected to protection tools, but not to information they were willing to disclose. Lastly, findings exhibit differences between the explored countries that affect the interaction between awareness, knowledge, and behaviors. Results, implications, and recommendations for effective based cyber security training programs are presented and discussed.