Gender difference and employees' cybersecurity behaviors

Security breaches are prevalent in organizations and many of the breaches are attributed to human errors. As a result, the organizations need to increase their employees' security awareness and their capabilities to engage in safe cybersecurity behaviors. Many different psychological and social factors affect employees' cybersecurity behaviors. An important research question to explore is to what extent gender plays a role in mediating the factors that affect cybersecurity beliefs and behaviors of employees. In this vein, we conducted a cross-sectional survey study among employees of diverse organizations. We used structural equation modelling to assess the effect of gender as a moderator variable in the relations between psychosocial factors and self-reported cybersecurity behaviors. Our results show that gender has some effect in security self-efficacy (r = -0.435, p < 0.001), prior experience (r = -0.235, p < 0.001) and computer skills (r = -0.198, p < 0.001) and little effect in cues-to-action (r = -0.152, p < 0.001) and self-reported cybersecurity behaviors (r = -0.152, p < 0.001).