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Information systems' security is more critical than ever before since security threats are rapidly growing. Before putting in place information systems' security measures, organizations are required to determine the maturity level of their information security governance. Literature review reveals that there is no recent study on information systems' security maturity level of banks in Ethiopia. This study thus seeks to measure the existing maturity level and examine the security gaps in order to propose possible changes in Ethiopian private banking industry's information system security maturity indicators.

Four private banks are selected as a representative sample. The system security engineering capability maturity model (SSE-CMM) is used as the maturity measurement criteria, and the measurement was based on ISO/IEC 27001 information security control areas. The data for the study were gathered using a questionnaire.

A total of 93 valid questionnaires were gathered from 110 participants in the study. Based on the SSE-CMM maturity model assessment criteria the private banking industry's current maturity level is level 2 (repeatable but intuitive). Institutions have a pattern that is repeated when completing information security operations but its existence was not thoroughly proven and institutional inconsistency still exists.

This study seeks to measure the existing maturity level and examine the security gaps in order to propose possible changes in Ethiopian private banking industry's information system security maturity indicators. This topic has not been attempted previously in the context of Ethiopian financial sector.

This study aims at investigating the extent of SysTrust’s framework (principles and criteria) as an internal control approach for assuring the reliability of accounting information system (AIS) were being implemented in Jordanian business organizations.

The study is based on primary data collected through a structured questionnaire from 239 out of 328 shareholdings companies. The survey units were the shareholding companies in Jordan, and the single key respondents approach was adopted. The extents of SysTrust principles were also measured. Previously validated instruments were used where required. The data were analysed using t-test and ANOVA.

The results indicated that the extent of SysTrust being implemented could be considered to be moderate at this stage. This implies that there are some variations among business organizations in terms of their level of implementing of SysTrust principles and criteria. The results also showed that the extent of SysTrust principles being implemented was varied among business organizations based on their business sector. However, there were not found varied due to their size of business and a length of time in business (experience).

This study is only conducted in Jordan as a developing country. Although Jordan is a valid indicator of prevalent factors in the wider MENA region and developing countries, the lack of external validity of this research means that any generalization of the research findings should be made with caution. Future research can be orientated to other national and cultural settings and compared with the results of this study.

The study provides evidence of the need for management to recognize the importance of the implementation of SysTrust principles and criteria as an internal control for assuring the reliability of AIS within their organizations and be aware which of these principles are appropriate to their size and industry sector.

The findings would be valuable for academic researchers, managers and professional accounting to acquire a better undemanding of the current status of the implementation of the SysTrust principles (i.e., availability, security, integrity processing, confidentiality, and privacy) as an internal control method for assuring the reliability of AIS by testing the phenomenon in Jordan as a developing country.

A growing number of studies have investigated the effect of ethical leadership on behavioral outcome of employees. However, considering the important role of ethics in IS security, the security literature lacks a theoretical and empirical investigation of the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' security behavior, such as information security policy (ISP) violation. Drawing on social learning and social exchange theories, this paper empirically tests the impact of ethical leadership on employees' ISP violation intention through both information security climate (i.e. from a moral manager's perspective) and affective commitment (i.e. from a moral person's perspective).

The research was developed based on social learning theory and social exchange theory. To measure the variables in the model, the authors used and adapted measurement items from previous studies. The authors conducted a scenario-based survey with 339 valid responses to test and validate the research model.

Results indicated that information security climate fully mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and ISP violation intention. The authors also found that information security climate enhances the negative effect of affective commitment on ISP violation intention.

This research contributes to the literature of information security by introducing the role of ethical leadership and integrating two theories into our research model. This study also calls attention to how information security climate and affective commitment mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' ISP violation intention. The theory-driven study provides important pragmatic guidance for enhancing the understanding of the importance of ethical leadership in information systems security research.

This paper aims to propose a conceptual model of policy components for software that supports modularizing and tailoring of information security policies (ISPs).

This study used a design science research approach, drawing on design knowledge from the field of situational method engineering. The conceptual model was developed as a unified modeling language class diagram using existing ISPs from public agencies in Sweden.

This study’s demonstration as proof of concept indicates that the conceptual model can be used to create free-standing modules that provide guidance about information security in relation to a specific work task and that these modules can be used across multiple tailored ISPs. Thus, the model can be considered as a step toward developing software to tailor ISPs.

The proposed conceptual model bears several short- and long-term implications for research. In the short term, the model can act as a foundation for developing software to design tailored ISPs. In the long term, having software that enables tailorable ISPs will allow researchers to do new types of studies, such as evaluating the software's effectiveness in the ISP development process.

Practitioners can use the model to develop software that assist information security managers in designing tailored ISPs. Such a tool can offer the opportunity for information security managers to design more purposeful ISPs.

The proposed model offers a detailed and well-elaborated starting point for developing software that supports modularizing and tailoring of ISPs.

This study is aimed at assessing the information security management practice with a focus on banking card security in selected financial institutions in Ethiopia, using an international information security standard as a benchmark. It is to identify the gaps and recommend best security practices to help financial institutions meet the required security compliance.

Two financial sectors were purposively selected. A total of twenty-five respondents (IT executives and IT staff) were included in the study. Quantitative data was collected using the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) security standard questionnaire. In addition, observation and document analysis were made.

The result shows that most of the essential security management activities in the financial sectors do not comply with the international security standard. Similarly, the level of most of the indispensable security requirements that should be in place is found to be below the acceptable level. The study also revealed major security factors that prohibit the financial sectors from PCI-DSS security standard compliance.

This study assessed the information security management practice with a focus on banking card security and tried to figure out the limitations of security practices of the organizations surveyed based on the standard adopted. The topic has not been well explored especially in the Ethiopia context. Hence, the result can positively influence security policies, particularly in the banking sector.

This paper proposes a holistic, proactive and adaptive approach to cybersecurity from a service lens, given the continuously evolving cyber-attack techniques, threat and vulnerability landscape that often overshadow existing cybersecurity approaches.

Through an extensive literature review of relevant concepts and analysis of existing cybersecurity frameworks, standards and best practices, a logical argument is made to produce a dynamic end-to-end cybersecurity service system model.

Cyberspace has provided great value for businesses and individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly motivated the move to cyberspace by organizations. However, the extension to cyberspace comes with additional risks as traditional protection techniques are insufficient and isolated, generally focused on an organization's perimeter with little attention to what is out there. More so, cyberattacks continue to grow in complexity creating overwhelming consequences. Existing cybersecurity approaches and best practices are limited in scope, and implementation strategies, differing in strength and focus, at different levels of granularity. Nevertheless, the need for a proactive, adaptive and responsive cybersecurity solution is recognized.

This paper presents a model that promises proactive, adaptive and responsive end-to-end cybersecurity. The proposed cybersecurity continuity and management model premised on a service system, leveraging on lessons learned from existing solutions, takes a holistic analytical view of service activities from source (service provider) to destination (Customer) to ensure end-to-end security, whether internally (within an organization) or externally.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a method to formalize information security control descriptions and a decision support system increasing the automation level and, therefore, the cost efficiency of the information security compliance checking process. The authors advanced the state-of-the-art by developing and applying the method to ISO 27002 information security controls and by developing a semantic decision support system.

The research has been conducted under design science principles. The formalized information security controls were used in a compliance/risk management decision support system which has been evaluated with experts and end-users in real-world environments.

There are different ways of obtaining compliance to information security standards. For example, by implementing countermeasures of different quality depending on the protection needs of the organization. The authors developed decision support mechanisms which use the formal control descriptions as input to support the decision-maker at identifying the most appropriate countermeasure strategy based on cost and risk reduction potential.

Formalizing and mapping the ISO 27002 controls to the security ontology enabled the authors to automatically determine the compliance status and organization-wide risk-level based on the formal control descriptions and the modelled environment, including organizational structures, IT infrastructure, available countermeasures, etc. Furthermore, it allowed them to automatically determine which countermeasures are missing to ensure compliance and to decrease the risk to an acceptable level.

I adapt the Integrated Model of Workplace Safety (Christian et al., 2009) to information security and highlight the need to understand additional factors that influence security compliance and additional security outcomes that need to be studied (i.e. security participation).

This model argues that distal factors in four major categories (employee characteristics, job characteristics, workgroup characteristics and organizational characteristics) influence two proximal factors (security motivation and security knowledge) and the security event itself, which together influence two important outcomes (security compliance and security participation).

Safety is a systems design issue, not an employee compliance issue. When employees make poor safety decisions, it is not the employee who is at fault; instead, the system is at fault because it induced the employee to make a poor decision and enabled the decision to have negative consequences.

Security compliance is as much a workgroup issue as an individual issue.

I believe that by reframing information security from a compliance issue to a systems design issue, we can dramatically improve security.

This paper aims to update the cybersecurity-related accounting literature by synthesizing 39 recent theoretical and empirical studies on the topic. Furthermore, the paper provides a set of categories into which the studies fit.

This is a synthesis paper that summarizes the research literature on cybersecurity, introducing knowledge from the extant research and revealing areas requiring further examination.

This synthesis identifies a research framework that consists of the following research themes: cybersecurity and information sharing, cybersecurity investments, internal auditing and controls related to cybersecurity, disclosure of cybersecurity activities and security threats and security breaches.

Academics, practitioners and the public would benefit from a research framework that categorizes the research topics related to cybersecurity in the accounting field. This type of analysis is vital to enhance the understanding of the academic research on cybersecurity and can be used to support the identification of new lines for future research.

This is the first literature analysis of cybersecurity in the accounting field, and it has significant implications for research and practice by detailing, for example, the benefits of and obstacles to information sharing. This synthesis also highlights the importance of the model for cybersecurity investments. Further, the review emphasizes the role of internal auditing and controls to improve cybersecurity.

Railways are a well-known example of complex critical infrastructure, incorporating socio-technical systems with humans such as drivers, signallers, maintainers and passengers at the core. The technological evolution including interconnectedness and new ways of interaction lead to new security and safety risks that can be realised, both in terms of human error, and malicious and non-malicious behaviour. This study aims to identify the human factors (HF) and cyber-security risks relating to the role of signallers on the railways and explores strategies for the improvement of “Digital Resilience” – for the concept of a resilient railway.

Overall, 26 interviews were conducted with 21 participants from industry and academia.

The results showed that due to increased automation, both cyber-related threats and human error can impact signallers’ day-to-day operations – directly or indirectly (e.g. workload and safety-critical communications) – which could disrupt the railway services and potentially lead to safety-related catastrophic consequences. This study identifies cyber-related problems, including external threats; engineers not considering the human element in designs when specifying security controls; lack of security awareness among the rail industry; training gaps; organisational issues; and many unknown “unknowns”.

The authors discuss socio-technical principles through a hexagonal socio-technical framework and training needs analysis to mitigate against cyber-security issues and identify the predictive training needs of the signallers. This is supported by a systematic approach which considers both, safety and security factors, rather than waiting to learn from a cyber-attack retrospectively.