Factors Influencing the Implementation of Information Security Risk Management : A case study of Nigerian Commercial Banks

Sammanfattning: The banking industry is one of the critical infrastructures in any economy. The services rendered by banks are systematically based on innovation, products, and technology to leverage their services. Several associated risks come along with the rendering of these banking services. The protection of critical information assets of any banking organization should be a top priority of the management. They must ensure that adequate provision is made to develop a strong strategy to control, reduce, and mitigate tasks, such as fraud, cyber-attacks, and other forms of cybersecurity exploitations.  Risk management is a series of actions to identify, assess and control threats and vulnerabilities in an organization's capital investment and revenue. These potential risks arise from diverse sources like credit risk, liquidity risk, financial uncertainties, legal actions, technology failures, business strategic management errors, accidental occurrences, and natural disasters.  This research study aimed to investigate the factors influencing the implementation of information security risk management in Nigerian Commercial Banks, using a social-technical system framework to address a fundamental human risk factor, which contributes predominately to the failure in information security risk management. These research was motivated by the fact that Nigerian banking sector is facing serious threats' threat emanate from cyber-attacks. Evidenced by the ever-increasing cyber-attacks, as demonstrated by a total of 1,612 complaints from consumers of financial services over banking fraud and aggressive charges received between July and December 2018 of which 99.38% of these incidences were against the commercial banks. The banks are faced with a lot of vulnerabilities and cybersecurity threats, and most of the attacks that happened within the banking sector are focused on the customers, and employees through phishing and social engineering. These showed weaknesses in information security management within the Nigerian banking industry.  However, the study was guided by the social-technical theory that advocates for overall training to the stakeholders that helps in changing their beliefs and norms about organization of IS security. In order to find out the factors influencing the implementation of information security risks management in respect of Nigerian Commercial Banks, this study evaluated the influence of management support, technical experts support, funding and users’ security awareness to curb the cyber-attacks in Nigerian financial sector. The contribution of this research is expected to lead to the improvement in the financial system, and organizations, where cybersecurity and information security risk management processes are taken seriously, to reduce the high level of information security risk, threats, and vulnerabilities. Nigeria is a developing country, and at the same time fighting to develop a more conducive business investment environment to attract both national and international investors.  A mixed approach research (qualitative and quantitative) method was used to validate this research study. Data collection tools used included interviews and questionnaires. Data analysis was done using the SPSS and logistic regression model.