Adoption of Information Security Strategies by Small and Medium- Sized in the City of Mbombela

The SME sector has been called the backbone of the economy, facilitate to create a big employment creator, poverty reducer, and the main engine for economic growth. They rely heavily on technology to conduct their business but lack the means to secure their information system leading to potential loss of information, compromising sensitive data due to hacking. Research study was undertaken to investigate implementation of information security strategies in SMEs. A survey of interview questions was administered to various SMEs in Nelspruit. The study found that SMEs lacked information security adoption strategies and information security awareness education programmes. A comprehensive survey on information security literature and SMEs related threats were discussed in detail. The researcher further explained the status of information security adoption strategies used in SMEs. new conceptual information security framework is proposed and developed based on the ISO 27002, which helps to address SMEs information security needs. The researcher conducted a thematic analysis on the selected SMEs, and a qualitative research methodology was employed, where interviews were used as a primary data collection instrument. The identified themes and their corresponding analyses and interpretation contribute on both a practical and theoretical level with the practical contributions relating to a set of security driven criteria for selecting an information security adoption strategy. The intended audience for this study is both academic and practitioners as it brings a new conceptual information security framework and the guidelines for assessing SMEs readiness for the adoption of information security strategies. The results of this study can be used as a reference guide to understand security management, as well as efficient and reliable implementation strategies of information systems and security strategies for organisations of all sizes