Effect of Motivation, Opportunity and Ability on Human Resources Information Security Management Considering the Roles of Attitudinal, Behavioral and Organizational Factors

Information security is a vital issue currently faced by organizations around the world. There is a huge flood of cyber-attacks and security threats due to the negligence of human agents, which doubles the importance of human resource behavior in the organization. This study provides an integrated framework of motivation opportunity-ability (MOA) that includes social psychological factors from the norm activation model (NAM) model and planned behavior (PB) theory to examine the variables that determine security behaviors in a well-founded university in Tehran. For this purpose, data were collected and analyzed by distributing 141 questionnaires among the staff of this university. The research hypotheses have been tested by structural equation modeling (SEM) using SPSS and Lisrel software. The results show that the ability has the greatest impact on information security behaviors, followed by opportunity and motivation, which have a direct and significant impact on behavior. In addition, motivation mediates the impact of opportunity and ability. Finally, recommendations are provided for designers of effective information security strategies based on the constraining factors of human resources behavior in the organization