Comparative Relationship between Cyber security Measures and Protection of Intellectual Property among University Staff in Rivers State, Nigeria

Universities in Rivers State, Nigeria, have experienced cybercrime, thereby creating significant security threats to the university system. The researchers sought a comparative relationship between cybersecurity measures and protection of intellectual property among universities staff in Rivers- State using: firewall hardware, antivirus software, and physical security measures to protect intellectual properties. The correlation research design was used for this study, while the population consisted of one thousand hundred (1500) respondents comprising of industrial training (IT) staff, academic staff, and students, all in Rivers- State universities. The sample size was 100, using the stratified random sampling technique, employed to ensure a concise representation from the sub-groups. Research questions were analyzed using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) method for both the research questions and hypotheses used in the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire titled, ‘Cybersecurity Measures and Protection of Intellectual Property’(CMPIPQ)while questionnaires were distributed through online platforms in Google Forms or Survey Monkey and physical forms, while the Cronbach alpha was used to determine the instrument’s reliability index, which yielded 0.87. Findings of the study showed that firewall hardware, antivirus software, and physical security significantly had an effect on protecting intellectual properties. It was recommended, among others, that the government and the university system should deepen campaigns on cybercrime awareness and punish offenders under the criminal act and conviction to ensure that academic excellence is upheld. Keywords: Cybersecurity, Protection, Intellectual Property & University