The security awareness paradox: A case study

Knowledge-intensive organizations are characterized by their dependency on highly skilled personnel who perform their daily work in a decentralized manner. In these organizations it is the users who make the important decisions, and therefore the organization's information security awareness is upheld by and depends on its users' combined security awareness. To assess the overall organizational security awareness it therefore becomes interesting to assess both the users' individual level of security awareness, as well as their level of consistency and conformity with regard to other users' awareness. In the present case study, 15 semi-structured interviews have been undertaken within a large telecommunication company in order to understand how significant IT security aspects are understood within the organization. The study highlights a number of perception differences where the technical IT staff and the ordinary users do not share the same understanding. It is suggested that these perception differences result from a paradoxical situation where the users' possibility to uphold security awareness is hindered because of security concerns.