Computer crime in organizations: PC virus attack and preventive behaviours

Today information technology (IT) is a priority element for organizations; if on one hand information technology permits organization efficiency on the other information technology is vulnerable: in fact a virus attack can stop the work of many employees. The study of preventive behaviour in PC viruses attack is a completely new area of research, however preventive behaviour has already been studied in the Health psychology field. Risk perception has been proposed as an important variable in the models about safety and health behaviours (Van der Pligt, 1996) and research shows that risk perception is often related to preventive behaviours and to expertise (Drottz, Sjöberg, 1991). It is hypothesized that behaviours aimed to prevent virus attack depend on risk perception and on IT self-competences; and that perception is related to IT competences. Subjects of the research are a group of employees (N=107; 62% Males; Age average=36,7; age s.d. = 10,0) working in the technical, administrative and productive departments of three different organizations. Participants filled out a questionnaire formed by three sets of questions: risk perceptions of IT virus attack, behaviours aimed to prevent this risk, and IT competence. A Structural Equation Model was used to test the model. Results show that the baseline model has a moderate fit with data, showing that IT competence influences preventive behaviours (stand. regress. weight = +.43) and that IT competence is correlated with risk perception of the attacks (stand. regress. weight = -.26). The influence of risk perception on preventive behaviours has not been confirmed.