دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تأثیر انعطاف پذیری و استرس شغلی بر آگاهی از امنیت اطلاعات - امرالد 2018

1. Introduction

The weakest link in a security system is most often the human factor (Schneier, 2004). It is widely accepted, and well documented, that cyber security breaches cannot be prevented through the implementation of solely technical solutions (Furnell et al., 2006, Parsons et al., 2014, Schultz, 2005). This has been supported by security and incident reports, international security standards, and peer reviewed literature. For example, IBM Global Technology Services (2015) determined that breaches were often unintentional and that over 95% were the result of human error. Standards Australia Limited (2015) released a code of practice outlining information security controls, which recommends an emphasis on human resource security, thereby recognising the liability of the human in information security.

In recent years there has been an increased focus on better understanding the characteristics of employees and how they can affect an organisation’s information security (McCormac et al., 2017c, Shropshire et al., 2006). Research has shown that organisations may reduce the risk of a security breach by 45% to 70% through improvements to employee behaviour (Wombat Security Technologies and Aberdeen Group, 2015). In line with this, the current study examined the relationships between resilience, job stress and Information Security Awareness (ISA). Essentially, it is likely that employees who are more resilient may be better at coping with job stress, and may therefore have better ISA. Throughout the following sections we introduce the main constructs considered in this study, namely, resilience, job stress and ISA.

5. Conclusion

This study empirically examined the relationship between ISA, resilience and job stress. It was found that individuals who were more resilient also reported lower job stress, and had better ISA, across all three components of ISA, knowledge, attitude and behaviour. It was also observed that as job stress decreased, ISA improved. It was shown that resilience played a mediating role in the relationship between job stress and ISA.

These findings have important theoretical and applied implications. From a practical perspective, organisations may benefit from incorporating training programs that focus on resilience training, in an effort to create a more resilient workforce. There are numerous benefits associated with having resilient employees, these benefits may extend to improvements in ISA and reductions in job stress. Theoretically, these initial findings can be used as a foundation for future research to investigate, more comprehensively, the impact of resilience and job stress in an effort to empirically ascertain causation. Essentially, it provides an opportunity for future research to determine the interaction and the effect of both organisational culture and, more specifically organisational security culture, on resilience, job stress and ISA.