The Role of “Eyes of Others” in Security Violation Prevention: Measures and Constructs

Abstract

Security research recognizes the effect of “being seen” in reducing the likelihood of security violations in the workplace. This has typically been construed in the context of formal monitoring processes by employers, but there is an emerging notion that workers care about what their workplace colleagues think of them and their activities. We leverage this idea of the “Eyes of Others” in motivating pro-security behaviors to apply to security contexts. We find that, for a set of worker self-perceptions including Morality and Self-Consciousness, the likelihood of engaging in mundane workplace security violations is impacted by the knowledge that coworkers are watching. This has important implications for novel expansions of deterrence research in IS Security, going forward.