Internal Marketing Cybersecurity-Conscious Culture

Introduction

Cybercrime will cost societies $6 trillion annually by 2019, which is twice the cost of what was paid in 2015. Escalating at this rate requires serious action to be taken by organisations, society, and governments. To combat cybercrime currently, $1 trillion is spent on cybersecurity (radiusits.com). The focus of this paper is on the internal environment of the firm from the perspective of internal marketing to combat the internal threat of cybercrime and improve awareness of cybersecurity by using an internal marketing lenses.

The organisational landscape has a bearing on the effectiveness of combatting cybersecurity issues (Nye, 2017). Cybersecurity combines “public good” attributes, frequently associated with governmental responsibilities for private market goods and services, and private organisations with non-market, non-governmental resources, and information sharing. Management of governmental responsibilities requires a robust governance structure (Kuerbis & Badiei, 466, 2017). The paper suggests that not only governments and nations have responsibility for cybersecurity, but the organisation and employees have ownership of the governance structures internally to mitigate the effects of cybercrime. Furthermore, some of the responsibilities of government need to be cascaded down to organisations to gain the organisational commitment necessary for organisations to defend their organisation and employees against cybercrime. Shackelford & Kastelic, (2015) suggest there is a growing agreement that nations need to take responsibility for enhancing cybersecurity. Ultimately, governments and nations will require to engage organisations in cybersecurity, and organisations must shoulder more of the burden of cybersecurity. To ensure firms are ready to engage with the responsibilities of governance and activities related to cybersecurity, the paper contends that an internal marketing approach is necessary, because cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility, and employee responsibility is a key driver to guarantee cybersecurity safeguarding of the organisation.