Identify of Factors Affecting Information Security Awareness and Weight Analysis Process

Abstract

Information exchange is a key aspect of using technology in everyday life. Crimes associated with the lack of information security awareness (ISA), misuse and carelessness are on the increase and often result in heavy losses and serious consequences. In order for ISA campaigns and programmes to be effective, the most successful and influential factors must be employed in the human component of the security awareness process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causes of human breaches to information security and undertake a weight analysis of the models’ predictors’ relationships utilised in ISA literature from the current decade. Usable data were collected from twenty-one empirical studies related to ISA research in order to obtain the correlations required to perform a weight analysis process for a predictor's relationships. The relationships examined in all studies used in this research (significant–nonsignificant) are presented in a diagram. Findings show that six independent variables were found to be classified as ‘wellutilised’ variables, and the rest of the independent variables converge at the ‘Promising’ classification level. Contributions, limitations and directions of future work are presented.