Evaluation of corporate information security in terms of organizational communication, organizational knowledge sharing and personal information security awareness

The developments in technology and the increase in information assets cause corporate information security to become increasingly important. The relevant literature revealed that taking only technical measures is not sufficient to ensure corporate information security. Organizational and individual characteristics should also be taken into account in ensuring corporate information security. In this context, the aim of the study is to evaluate the institutional information security of the academic and administrative staff working at a university in the context of organizational communication, organizational knowledge sharing, and personal information security awareness. Correlational survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was adopted in the study. In addition, predictive models of data mining were used. The population of the study consists of academic and administrative staff working in a university located in the east of Turkey. The participants consist of 479 academic and administrative personnel. In the study, Corporate Information Security Scale (Gerçeker, 2012), Information Security Awareness Level Determination Scale (Keser and Güldüren, 2015), Organizational Knowledge Sharing Scale (Aslan, 2014) and the Organizational Communication Inventory (Tuna, 2008), whose standardization processes were carried out by the researcher, were used. Confirmatory factor analysis, correlation, regression, and structural equation model analyzes were performed with the obtained data. In addition, the predictive models of data mining, Support Vector Machines, Artificial Neural Networks, K-Nearest Neighbor, and Random Forest algorithms were used. In order to determine the normal distribution of the data, the kurtosis and skewness values were calculated. Since the data were normally distributed, an independent samples t-test and ANOVA test were performed. Eta-square (η2) and Cohen d values were calculated in order to determine the effect size of the significant difference as a result of the independent samples t-test and ANOVA test. As a result of the study, it was determined that the academic and administrative staff working at the university had a high level of institutional information security, information security awareness, organizational communication, and organizational knowledge sharing. As a result of the difference analysis conducted according to demographic information, it was found that corporate information security differs significantly according to the frequency of checking privacy/security settings on the Internet/social networking sites; information security awareness differs significantly according to age, duration of service, frequency of checking privacy/security settings on the Internet/social networking sites; organizational knowledge sharing differs significantly according to age, length of service, and frequency of checking privacy/security settings on the Internet/social networking sites. As a result of the regression analysis, it was concluded that personal information security awareness, organizational communication, and organizational knowledge sharing significantly predicted corporate information security. The results of the path analysis carried out to determine the relationship between the variables and corporate information security were also similar to the results of the regression analysis. According to these results, a high level of information security awareness and organizational communication in universities positively affected corporate information security. In addition, it was concluded that organizational communication and organizational knowledge sharing had a mediating effect on corporate information security. It is expected that making plans to increase the awareness of personal information security of academic and administrative staff working in universities will contribute positively to ensuring corporate information security. In addition, it can be said that encouraging formal communication within the institution will positively affect the provision of corporate information security. Promoting organizational knowledge sharing by increasing formal communication within the institution will positively contribute to the provision of corporate information security.