Determinants of Data Security in Management Information Systems of Commercial Banks in Nairobi, Kenya

In Kenya, rarely are cases concerning data security breaches on commercial banks reported \nor documented. This does not however mean that there are no such cases or that the \ninformation systems used by the commercial banks are completely secure. In as much as due \ndiljgeoce~d gross assessment of usage, vulnerability, security and recovery of the systems \nadopted ~y these banks is done before their adoption, it is worth to note that the human brain \nhas remained superior to computers, implying therefore that the information stored within \nthese information systems is not fool proof and that there do exist risks of manipulation of \ntheir data by rogue and systematic users. Further, limited study has been carried out to \ndetermine factors that influence data security in the Information systems used by the banks. \nOccurrence of a breach in data security is unpredictable and as such, informed defence \nagainst their occurrence is critical. It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to establish \nthe factors that influence data security in commercial banks. The objective of the study was \nto determine the factors that influence data security in the management information systems \nused by commercial banks in Nairobi, Kenya. The study will adopt a cross-sectional survey \nin which different banks will be studied. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire \nwhile an extensive literature review has been done using various secondary sources. The \ntarget population was the information security staff working in the headquarters of \ncommercial banks located in Nairobi. A census for all the banks in Nairobi was carried out \nand the study targeted two respondents per bank, at two strata; one senior IT manager and a \ngeneral IT technician. Questionnaires were distributed at all the bank's headquarters and \ncollected after a period of seven days. Introduction correspondence were done through email \nto all the bank's human resource department which were requested to allocate two random \nrespondents. The data collected was thereafter coded andentered into SPSS and analysed \nusing descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation. Out of 86 questionnaires distributed 66 \nwere successfully completed and refilmed by respondents from 34 commercial banks, giving \nquestionnaire response rate of 76.721-~: The results indicates thattype of data increases \nchances of breach attempts. The amount of data is strongly positively correlated with data \nintegrity and network security. The study also established that customers have contributed to \ncases of fraud due to poor handling of their data. Majority of respondents indicated that their \norganization have experienced frauds through use of hostile technology e.g. ATM skimming. \nFrom the research findings, it can be concluded that type and size of data, user knowledge \nand hostile technology does influence data integrity and network security. The research \ntherefore concludes that both sufficient financial and human resources should be deployed by \nthe commercial banks to deal with data security. This study identifies key factors in banks \ndata that might compromise data security with a view to educating the stewards of banks \ninfluencing their direction of designing systems to guarantee banks data integrity and \nnetwork security. The research recommends that for the integrity of the data and network \nsecurity the top management should support effective training,skill up-grading and awareness \nmechanisms to bank employees that would respond and continuously adapt to emerging \ntechnological challenges in the bank's MIS infrastructure.