Understanding Nonmalicious Security Violations in the Workplace: A Composite Behavior Model

End users are said to be “the weakest link” in information systems (IS) security management in the workplace. they often knowingly engage in certain insecure uses of IS and violate security policies without malicious intentions. Few studies, however, have examined end user motivation to engage in such behavior. to fill this research gap, in the present study we propose and test empirically a nonmalicious security violation (NMSV) model with data from a survey of end users at work. the results suggest that utilitarian outcomes (relative advantage for job performance, perceived security risk), normative outcomes (workgroup norms), and self-identity outcomes (perceived identity match) are key determinants of end user intentions to engage in NMSVs. In contrast, the influences of attitudes toward security policy and perceived sanctions are not significant. this study makes several significant contributions to research on security-related behavior by (1) highlighting the importance of job performance goals and security risk perceptions on shaping user attitudes, (2) demonstrating the effect of workgroup norms on both user attitudes and behavioral intentions, (3) introducing and testing the effect of perceived identity match on user attitudes and behavioral intentions, and (4) identifying nonlinear relationships between constructs. this study also informs security management practices on the importance of linking security and business objectives, obtaining user buy-in of security measures, and cultivating a culture of secure behavior at local workgroup levels in organizations. KeY words and PHrases: information systems security, nonlinear construct relationships, nonmalicious security violation, perceived identity match, perceived security risk, relative advantage for job performance, workgroup norms. information sYstems (is) securitY Has become a major cHallenGe for organizations thanks to the increasing corporate use of the Internet and, more recently, wireless networks. In the 2010 computer Security Institute (cSI) survey of computer security practitioners in u.S. organizations, more than 41 percent of the respondents reported security incidents [68]. In the united Kingdom, a similar survey found that 45 percent of the participating companies had security incidents in 2008 . While the causes for these security incidents may be difficult to fully identify, it is generally understood that insiders from within organizations pose a major threat to IS security [36, 55]. For example, peer-to-peer file-sharing software installed by employees may cause inadvertent disclosure of sensitive business information over the Internet . Employees writing down passwords on a sticky note or choosing easy-to-guess passwords may risk having their system access privilege be abused by others [98]. the 2010 cSI survey found that nonmalicious insiders are a big issue [68]. according to the survey, more than 14 percent of the respondents reported that nearly all their losses were due to nonmalicious, careless behaviors of insiders. Indeed, end users are often viewed as “the weakest link” in the IS security chain [73], and fundamentally IS security has a “behavioral root” . uNDErStaNDING NONMalIcIOuS SEcurItY VIOlatIONS IN tHE WOrKPlacE 205 a frequently recommended organizational measure for dealing with internal threats posed by end user behavior is security policy [6]. For example, a security policy may specify what end users should (or should not) do with organizational IS assets, and it may also spell out the consequences of policy violations. Having a policy in place, however, does not necessarily guarantee security because end users may not always act as prescribed [7]. a practitioner survey found that even if end users were aware of potential security problems related to their actions, many of them did not follow security best practices and continued to engage in behaviors that could open their organizations’ IS to serious security risks [62]. For example, the survey found that many employees allowed others to use their computing devices at work despite their awareness of possible security implications. It was also reported that many end users do not follow policies and some of them knowingly violate policies without worry of repercussions [22]. this phenomenon raises an important question: What factors motivate end users to engage in such behaviors? the role of motivation has not been considered seriously in the IS security literature [75] and our understanding of the factors that motivate those undesirable user behaviors is still very limited. to fill this gap, the current study aims to investigate factors that influence end user attitudes and behavior toward organizational IS security. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we review the literature on end user security-related behaviors. We then propose a theoretical model of nonmalicious security violation and develop related hypotheses. this is followed by discussions of our research methods and data analysis. In the final section, we discuss our findings, implications for research and practice, limitations, and further research directions.