Introduction Social media constitutes a major vector for social engineering attacks, particularly affecting secondary school students in Morocco. Strengthening cybersecurity awareness in educational settings has therefore become a pressing need. This study aims to design and validate a cybersecurity awareness framework tailored to secondary education. Methods The proposed framework was developed using a Design Science Research methodology and informed by a synthesis of 48 peer-reviewed publications. It is structured around four core domains: (1) learning and skills development; (2) institutional policies and guidelines, including acceptable use policies, disciplinary measures, and compliance mechanisms; (3) technical safeguards implemented in school environments, such as firewalls, endpoint protection, and intrusion detection and prevention systems; and (4) continuous monitoring and evaluation, including security audits, user feedback, and incident management protocols. Empirical validation was conducted through a 12-week quasi-experimental pre–post study in two urban high schools, involving 1,000 students (500 in the experimental group and 500 in the control group). Results The findings reveal statistically significant improvements ranging from 40% to 47% across key indicators, including cybersecurity knowledge, security practices, attitudes toward online risks, policy compliance, and incident preparedness among students exposed to the framework. Discussion These results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides a practical and scalable approach to mitigating social engineering risks on social media platforms while fostering digital hygiene in secondary education. Future research will focus on long-term knowledge retention and assessing the applicability of the framework in non-urban educational contexts.
Chahid et al. (2026) studied this question.