Avoidance of Cybersecurity Threats with the Deployment of a Web-Based Blockchain-Enabled Cybersecurity Awareness System

• Main Authors: Abdul Razaque, Abrar Al Ajlan, Noussaiba Melaoune, Munif Alotaibi, Bandar Alotaibi, Issabekov Dias, Ammar Oad, Salim Hariri, Chenglin Zhao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: information security; cybercrime; cyber awareness; cybersecurity basics; cybersecurity hygiene; blockchain technology
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/17/7880

Modern information technology (IT) is well developed, and almost everyone uses the features of IT and services within the Internet. However, people are being affected due to cybersecurity threats. People can adhere to the recommended cybersecurity guidelines, rules, adopted standards, and cybercrime preventive measures to largely mitigate these threats. The ignorance of or lack of cybersecurity knowledge also causes a critical problem regarding confidentiality and privacy. It is not possible to fully avoid cybercrimes that often lead to sufficient business losses and spread forbidden themes (disgust, extremism, child porn, etc.). Therefore, to reduce the risk of cybercrimes, a web-based Blockchain-enabled cybersecurity awareness program (WBCA) process is introduced in this paper. The proposed WBCA trains users to improve their security skills. The proposed program helps with understanding the common behaviors of cybercriminals and improves user knowledge of cybersecurity hygiene, best cybersecurity practices, modern cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and trends. Furthermore, the proposed WBCA uses Blockchain technology to protect the program from potential threats. The proposed program is validated and tested using real-world cybersecurity topics with real users and cybersecurity experts. We anticipate that the proposed program can be extended to other domains, such as national or corporate courses, to increase the cybersecurity awareness level of users. A CentOS-based virtual private server is deployed for testing the proposed WBCA to determine its effectiveness. Finally, WBCA is also compared with other state-of-the-art web-based programs designed for cybersecurity awareness.