Explaining the Employment of Information Security Measures by Individuals in Organizations: The Selfprotection Model

Abstract

Understanding the cyberspace and awareness of its effects impacts the lives of all individuals. Thus, the knowledge of cybersecurity in both organizations and private operations is essential. Research on various aspects of cybersecurity is crucial for achieving adequate levels of cybersecurity. The content of this scientific monography provides answers to various topical questions from the organizational, individual, sociological, technical and legal aspects of security in the cyberspace. The papers in the monography combine the findings of researchers from different subareas of cybersecurity, show the effects of adequate levels of cybersecurity on the operations of organizations and individuals, and present the latest methods to defend against threats in the cyberspace from technical, organizational and security aspects.

Social Network Self-Protection Model:What Motivates Users to Self-Protect?

“…PMT aims to explain how fear appeals change someone's protection-related behaviors through perceived vulnerability and severity, measure efficacy and self-efficacy [23]. In this paper, we focus on threat appraisal which often includes perceived vulnerability, severity and threats in research on motivation to engage in self-protective behavior in various research areas [13,24,25]. Perceived vulnerability indicates the odds that someone will become a victim of an unwanted event (i.e., the likelihood of a cybersecurity incident) [18,20,21,[26][27][28].…”

“…It may impact security behavior in both personal and organizational contexts [29][30][31]. Perceived severity is the extent of the consequences for someone in the case of an unwanted event (i.e., the effects of a cybersecurity incident) [13,18,20,21,27,28]. Perceived threats are closely related to both perceived vulnerability and severity and has been commonly presented as the key trigger for the internal motivation for self-protective behavior [13,24,25].…”

“…Individuals first need to detect and evaluate cybersecurity threats in order to engage in self-protective behaviors [13]. If the threat assessment results in a high degree of vulnerability and/or a high degree of severity, an individual will be more motivated to self-protect and vice versa [41].…”

“…Sometimes social network users do not have the adequate knowledge to protect their social network accounts and themselves from cyberthreats even though security mechanisms are available [11]. Additionally, social network users may simply lack the needed motivation to seek knowledge on how to protect themselves or to engage in self-protective behavior in the cyberspace [12][13][14]. It appears that many users plainly disregard security recommendations [15].…”

“…Research on self-protection in the cyberspace primarily addresses the users in organizational contexts as an important part of ensuring information security in organizations [13,18,19]. Even the research focusing on the individual level, is done from the socio-organizational perspectives in the context of organizations [20,21].…”