Search results

The concept of information security culture, which recently gained increased attention, aims to comprehensively grasp socio-cultural mechanisms that have an impact on organizational security. Different measurement instruments have been developed to measure and assess information security culture using survey-based tools. However, the content, breadth and face validity of these scales vary greatly. This study aims to identify and provide an overview of the scales that are used to measure information security culture and to evaluate the rigor of reported scale development and validation procedures.

Papers that introduce a new or adapt an existing scale of information security culture were systematically reviewed to evaluate scales of information security culture. A standard search strategy was applied to identify 19 relevant scales, which were evaluated based on the framework of 16 criteria pertaining to the rigor of reported operationalization and the reported validity and reliability of the identified scales.

The results show that the rigor with which scales of information security culture are validated varies greatly and that none of the scales meet all the evaluation criteria. Moreover, most of the studies provide somewhat limited evidence of the validation of scales, indicating room for further improvement. Particularly, critical issues seem to be the lack of evidence regarding discriminant and criterion validity and incomplete documentation of the operationalization process.

Researchers focusing on the human factor in information security need to reach a certain level of agreement on the essential elements of the concept of information security culture. Future studies need to build on existing scales, address their limitations and gain further evidence regarding the validity of scales of information security culture. Further research should also investigate the quality of definitions and make expert assessments of the content fit between concepts and items.

Organizations that aim to assess the level of information security culture among employees can use the results of this systematic review to support the selection of an adequate measurement scale. However, caution is needed for scales that provide limited evidence of validation.

This is the first study that offers a critical evaluation of existing scales of information security culture. The results have decision-making value for researchers who intend to conduct survey-based examinations of information security culture.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how decisions of managers and administrators of online communities on norms and rules affect the sense of virtual community (SOVC), which is an important factor of the quality of online information.

The study followed a two-level research design based on 970 online community members, nested within 36 online communities. Data collection consisted of two stages: first a web survey of a sample of online community members was conducted, followed by a web survey of administrators of the same online communities. A two-level hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results suggest that prominence of rules under the condition of members’ participation in their creation, presence of reputation mechanisms, and content moderation contribute significantly to the SOVC , while presence of lighter sanctions and interactive moderation do not.

Since this study is based on web forums, the validity of the proposed hypotheses for other types of online communities cannot be firmly established. Additional elements of online community management could be considered for a stronger system-level explanation of the SOVC.

The study demonstrates that online community administrators need to be considerate in creating and enforcing norms, as their decisions have an impact on the SOVC and consequently on the quality of online information.

The literature considers many factors of the SOVC but none of the previous studies have considered how community management is associated with this phenomenon.