Predicting Insider's Malicious Security Behaviours: A General Strain Theory-Based Conceptual Model

Insider’s malicious information security behaviours have always been a persistent problem and requiring urgent mitigation solutions. More recently, seminal calls for future research suggested exploring the influences of employee-workplace interaction and pre-kinetic events such as organisational injustice since they are argued to hold potential impacts on the insider’s intention to perform abusive computer behaviours. This study responds to those calls by investigating the relationship between organisational injustice and insider’s intention to commit malicious security behaviours. In addition, it employed General Strain Theory–a highly influential theory in criminology yet receives little attention in information security behavioural research. The literature review suggested the employed theory to have close relationship with organisational injustice concepts, therefore adds more explanations to why insiders deliberately perform computer abuses. As a result, a testable conceptual model incorporating strains, disgruntlement and organisational injustice is proposed to describe the relationships between those factors and insider’s malicious information security behaviours. The research concludes with the model’s potential implications, limitations and provides future directions.