How does intellectual capital align with cyber security?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to position the preservation and protection of intellectual capital as a cyber security concern. The paper outlines the security requirements of intellectual capital to help boards of directors (BoDs) and executive management teams to understand their responsibilities and accountabilities in this respect. Design/methodology/approach The research methodology is desk research. In other words, we gathered facts and existing research publications that helped us to define key terms, to formulate arguments to convince BoDs of the need to secure their intellectual capital and to outline actions to be taken by BoDs to do so. Findings Intellectual capital, as a valuable business resource, is related to information, knowledge and cyber security. Hence, preservation thereof is also related to cyber security governance and merits attention from BoDs. Research limitations/implications - This paper clarifies BoDs intellectual capital governance responsibilities, which encompass information, knowledge and cyber security governance. Practical implications - The authors hope that BoDs will benefit from the clarifications, and especially from the positioning of intellectual capital in cyber space. Social implications - If BoDs know how to embrace their intellectual capital governance responsibilities, this will help to ensure that such intellectual capital is preserved and secured. Originality/value This paper extends a previous paper published by Von Solms and Von Solms, which clarified the key terms of information and cyber security, and the governance thereof. The originality and value is the focus on the securing of intellectual capital, a topic that has not yet received a great deal of attention from security researchers.