Breach of data is part of cybersecurity that can adversely affect e-government
administration. Since 2005, 9000 data breaches have resulted in a loss of 11.5 billion
individual records with significant financial and technical impacts. Therefore, the
objectives of this study were to examine the factors that contribute to data security among
government officers, such as technology, human errors, organizational and academic
background. Quantitative research approach was used for this study with a sample size of
370 officers attached to the Ministry of Defense (MinDef), Malaysia. The research
instrument used to collect data is a questionnaire. From the response rate of 43%, the
gender distribution of the respondents were 30.2% male and 69.8% female, from which
41.9% are from the combined age brackets of 21-40 years. The highest level of education
or qualification is undergraduate degree holders at 46.5%. The highest number of services
years between two to five years were 34.9% and, 58.1% are executives at MinDef. The
findings revealed that 58.7% of the technology, human and organization factors were
significantly related to data security. Also, the findings indicated that the highest beta score
is the organization (0.541), followed by human (0.255) and technology (0.130). In
conclusion, based on the findings, the most influential predictor on the data security
challenge is organization whereas the least influential predictor of data security challenge
is technology. Therefore, it is recommended that the four variables be further tested to
encompass other ministries in Malaysia’s federal government.
