Narrative review: Social media use by employees and the risk to institutional and personal information security compliance in South Africa
View/ Open
Date
2021Author
Murire, Obrain T.
Flowerday, Stephen
Strydom, Kariena
Fourie, Christoffel J.S.
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Social media platforms have become essential to organisations in developing countries as
they can offer a business advantage. This comes with security risks and privacy concerns as
numerous scientific literatures have testified. Although the majority of employees are using
social media privately and at the workplace (using the same device such as a smartphone),
some organisations have not effectively established information security awareness
programmes to protect their electronic information backbone. It is a fact that professional
hackers are prowling constantly to gain access to systems of organisations and sometimes
employees make naïve mistakes that can open the door to cyberattacks, which exploit
vulnerabilities in the organisation’s system. The current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
crisis is a prime example where employees and students are encouraged to work from home.
No organisation does have complete control over the security measures each employee has in
place for his or her private connection. This study applied a desktop review to identify the
cyber risks associated with social media use at the workplace. A scoping literature review
gathered the data following a qualitative approach. The theories of reasoned action and
deterrence were used as a theoretical foundation for the study. A model is proposed to enhance
employee information security compliance when using social media at the workplace and
demonstrates how awareness strategies can be employed to improve employee information
security compliance. It is recommended that organisations implement methods to minimise
social media risks to ensure that the integrity of information is preserved through these
awareness programmes to employees.
Collections
- TD: 2021 Volume 17 [42]