Information systems resources and information security

Recent studies suggest that the number of information security incidents has increased dramatically and has caused significant economic loss worldwide. Awareness of the significance of information security is evidenced by a rapid increase in information security investments. Despite the fact that information security has taken on a new level of importance, academic research on this subject is still in its infancy. A review of literature indicated that past studies largely took a resource based view, suggesting that organizations invest and develop a variety of IS resources so as to ease potential threats caused by information security breaches. However, the resource-based perspective as used in previous studies was somewhat limited. Based on and extending from previous work, this study employed the resource-based view as a theoretical lens to examine the role that IS resources play in determining the level of information security. A field study was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results of the model testing show that IT human, relational, and infrastructure resources have significant impacts on information security.