Information Systems Security Governance Research: A Behavioral Perspective

Behavioral information systems security governance entails managing the informal structures in an organization to ensure an appropriate security environment. Informal structures in an organization comprise the individual values, beliefs and behavior prevalent in an organization guiding the norms and employee perception of job responsibilities. Five consistent themes arise from a critical review of the extant literature in this area: security culture, internal control assessment, security policy implementation, individual values, beliefs, and security training. A theoretical framework from the field of sociology is proposed to investigate the current issues in behavioral aspects of security governance. Contributions of this paper are discussed and future research directions suggested. Keywords– Information systems security, security governance, theory of anomie, behavioral aspects.