Study about the Impact of Information Security Systems on Corporate Performance: Based on IT Relatedness Theory

Abstract

According to the development of new Information Technologies, firms consistently invest a significant amount of money in IT activities, such as establishing internal and external information systems. However, several anti-Information activitiessuch as hacking, leakage of information and system destructionare also rapidly increasing, thus many firms are exposed to direct and indirect threats. Therefore, firms try to establish information security systems and manage these systems more effectively via an enterprise perspective. However, stakeholders or some managers have negative opinions about information security systems. Therefore, in this research, we study the relationship between multibusiness firms’ performance and information security systems. Information security indicates physical and logical correspondence of information system department against threats and disaster. Studies on information security systems suggested frameworks such as IT Governance Cube and COBIT Framework to identify information security systems. Thus, this study define that information security systems is a controlled system on enterprise IT process and resource on IT Governance perspective rather than independent domain of IT. Thus, Information Security Systems should be understood as a subordinate concept of IT and business processes. In addition, this study incorporates information capability to information security system literature to show the positive relationship between Information Security Systems and Corporate Performance. The concept of information capability suggested that an interaction of human, information, technical and an effect on corporate performance using three types of capability (IT Practice, Information Management Practice, Information Behaviors and Values). Information capability is about firms’ capability to manage IT infrastructure and information as well as individual employees who use IT infrastructure and information. Thus, this study uses information capability as a mediating variable for the relationship between information security systems and firms’ performance.To investigate the relationship between Information Security Systems and multibusiness firms' performance, this study extends the IT relatedness concept into Information Security Systems. IT relatedness provides understanding of how corporations cope with conflicts between headquarters and business units to create a synergy effect and achieve high performance using IT resources. Based on the previous literature, this study develops the IT Security Relatedness model. IT Security Relatedness is our main independent variable, while Information Capability and Information Security Performance are mediating variables. To control for the common method bias, we collect each multibusiness firm's financial performance and use it as our dependent variable. We find that Information Security Systems influence Information Capability and Information Security Performance positively, and these two variables consequently influence Corporate Performance positively. In addition, this result indirectly shows that corporations under a multibusiness environment can obtain synergy effects using the integrated Information Security Systems. This positive impact of Information Security Systems on multibusiness firms’ performance has an important implication to various stakeholders. Therefore, multibusiness firms need to establish Information Security Systems to achieve better financial performance.