How Personality Traits Impacts on Cyber Security Behaviors of SMEs Employees

Human behavior is seen as the primary risk within small enterprises. Attackers aim to achieve their destructive goals by exploiting end-users flaws, and they prefer to attack people rather than systems. As a result, human vulnerabilities endanger electronic systems, data confidentiality, and reliability. Because of their recognized susceptibility to cyber security, cyber-attackers are increasingly targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rather than large organizations. Previous studies have shown that employees are the weakest point in cyber security. For successful cybersecurity practices in companies, security risks and employees' decision-making processes should be considered more attentively. Personality is one of the most important psychological characteristics influencing human conduct. Personality traits influence people's decision-making processes and boost the performance of employee behaviors. The research discusses psychological aspects, end-point cyber-attacks, personality traits, high and low scores of employees' behaviors, and risk-taking behavior; this study further provides implications for SME employees to enhance security behaviors based on personality traits experiences. This research helps SMEs in better understanding the causes behind employees' cyber security behavior.