Information security controls have an impact on organisational
processes, technology and the manner in which employees
process information. To implement information
security practices effectively, organisations must ensure that
the culture is conducive to the protection of information.
Instilling a culture in which information is governed and
protected by all employees at all times in accordance with
organisational policy and regulatory requirements is by no
means an easy task. It is crucial to understand the perceptions,
attitudes and behaviour of the organisation's employees
in order to shape the information security culture into one in
which the nature, confidentiality and sensitivity of information
are understood, and information is handled accordingly.
The pace at which technology is evolving makes shaping
an information security culture difficult. The manner in which
employees use new technology, such as cloud computing and
mobile devices, to access and process organisational information
creates new habits and is often a challenge for IT and
information security departments, which need to implement
controls to protect the organisation's information. A survey
conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (2014) found that current
employees (31%) and former employees (27%) still
contribute to information security incidents. Interestingly, the
survey results indicated that the number of actual incidents
attributable to employees had risen by 25% since the 2013
survey. Research conducted by the Ponemon Institute (2013)
indicated that breaches were attributable to human factors
(35%), system glitches (29%) and malicious or criminal attacks
(37%). An information security programme should therefore
be holistic and cover elements from a human, technology and
procedural perspective.
A security awareness and training programme is critical to
ensure the success of an information security programme
(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2014). However, many organisations
do not yet have security awareness and training programmes
in place. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers
survey (2014), only 54% of organisations in South America,
63% in Asia Pacific, 55% in Europe and 64% in North America
have instituted information security awareness and training
programmes. It is questionable how effective the information
security awareness and training programmes are, as employees
still contribute to information security incidents.
This paper illustrates the application of the information
security culture assessment (ISCA) in an empirical study that
provided the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the
theoretical ISCA developed during previous research. The
impact of information security awareness and training programmes
as measured through ISCA is analysed to ascertain
whether a focus on these aspects could contribute to instilling
a stronger information security culture. A stronger information
security culture can significantly improve the protection
of information, minimise employee-related risk, and enhance
compliance with information security and related policy and
regulatory requirements. The content and focus of information
security awareness and training programmes are essential
to ensure their effectiveness. This can be established by
conducting ISCA to tailor the audience groups, content and
focus of awareness and training programmes so that they will
positively influence the information security culture. In
addition, ISCA can help management to identify other factors
that might influence the information security culture, such as
trust, leadership or change management, which, together
with training and awareness, can have a positive influence on
the information security culture.
2. Background
The human issue in the cont