Protecting intellectual property from insider threats

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a theory of information security intelligence and examine the effects of managers’ information security intelligence (MISI) on employees’ procedural countermeasure awareness and information security policy (ISP) compliance intention. Design/methodology/approach A survey approach and structural equation modeling is utilized. Partial least squares (WarpPLS 6.0) and nonlinear algorithm are employed to analyze and examine the hypotheses. In total, 324 employees from companies in South Korea participated in the survey, which was conducted by a professional survey service company. Findings MISI positively affects employees’ awareness of information security procedural countermeasures; information security knowledge and problem-solving skills have positive effects on procedural countermeasures awareness; MISI increases employees’ compliance intention through procedural countermeasure awareness; and information security procedural countermeasures positively affect employees’ ISP compliance intention. Research limitations/implications This study proposes a theory of information security intelligence and examines its impacts on employees’ compliance intentions. The study highlights the mediating role of information security procedural countermeasures between information security intelligence and employees’ compliance intentions. Practical implications Managers should improve and explicitly demonstrate information security knowledge and problem-solving skills to increase employees’ ISP compliance intention. To protect the organization’s intellectual capital, managers should champion the development and promotion of PCM, rather than leave these functions to the information security group. Originality/value This is the first empirical study to propose and validate MISI.

Assessing Information Security Competencies of Firm Leaders towards Improving Procedural Information Security Countermeasure: Awareness and Cybersecurity Protective Behavior

“…In order to boost employees' information security compliance intention behavior, Kim, Hovav and Han (2020) also recommended that the company's security executives exhibit information security expertise and problem-solving skills. Other studies have shown that the information security leader is crucial to supporting information security initiatives and ensuring the success of the organization's information security awareness programs (Hong and Furnell, 2021;Ameen et al, 2021).…”

Toward an intellectual capital cyber security theory: insights from Lebanon

“…Thus, ICCS should be an integral part of the management of IC. The value of IC is directly linked to an organization's ability to manage its IC in an efficient (Secundo et al , 2017) and secure way, including protecting intellectual property from insiders (Kim et al , 2019). Because IC is composed of human capital (HC), structural capital (SC) and relational capital (RC; Bontis, 1998; Choong, 2008), ICCS is challenged by threats on each of these three levels (Renaud et al , 2019a, b).…”

“…Although in recent years, there has been emerging interest in the internal behavioral risk of ICCS (Bongiovanni et al , 2020; Kim et al , 2019), a dearth of research remains in this domain for several reasons including the infancy of ICCS field and by implication a lack of nascent security theories within the IC literature. One way to fill this need is to draw upon a non-identical yet similar field of research that has mature security literature and adopt constructs and models to explain and advance relevant ICCS theories.…”

“…This is not totally unprecedented; the concept of securing smart devices to protect knowledge was advocated by Desouza and Vanapalli (2005) more than a decade ago. More recently, several studies were conducted in the field of IC to discover the importance of ISS in the protection of ICCS: “PCM [procedural information security countermeasures] and ISP [IS policy] compliance are expected to protect organizational IC by reducing internal leakage” (Kim et al , 2019, p. 183). Data breaches, which are by default in the field of ISS, impact the three components of IC in the following ways: Loss of confidentiality will impact all of the three components, but loss of integrity and availability will impact at least HC and SC (La Torre et al , 2018).…”

Transparency of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Insights from Professionals in Computing and Healthcare Worldwide

“…• Educate employees about intellectual property. Employees should be made aware of the value, boundaries, and risk of IP (or lack thereof) [83][84][85]. Training should make clear to them what needs to be protected, how to protect it, and from whom it should be protected [83][84][85].…”