Organizational Determinants of Cybersecurity Readiness: Evidence from a Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

: Background: Novel cyber threats to organizations have greatly escalated due to the high digitalization rates of organizations, and cybersecurity readiness is a critical capability of organizations and not a technical issue. Although there is increased awareness, most organizations are ill-equipped due to weaknesses in human behavior, governance, leadership commitment, technology infrastructure, and incident response mechanisms. This paper discusses organizational factors that play a major role in cybersecurity readiness. Methods: Primary data from 230 participants were collected using a questionnaire approach and analyzed using IBM SPSS software. The quantitative methods adopted include descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s reliability test and Pearson’s Correlation analysis. Results: The findings indicate significant positive relationships between employee training, technological assistance, incident response planning and cybersecurity readiness, underscoring the importance of cybersecurity readiness. Conclusions: There are significant relationships between employee cybersecurity training, security policy enforcement, management support for cybersecurity, availability of cybersecurity tools, incident response planning, and organizational cybersecurity readiness.