NLP-based Enhancement of Information Security in ITO - A Diffusion of Innovation Theory perspective

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) has grown significantly in recent decades and is now over a USD trillion-dollar industry. Service provider organisations are striving to improve the efficiencies of their service deliveries. Natural language processing (NLP) provides an opportunity to bring efficiencies through automation in understanding and processing information. Since information security risk management (ISRM) in ITO is a growing concern of both, client and service provider organisations, they are adopting to improve ISRM in ITO using NLP. This paper explores those ISRM improvement scenarios. It also investigates the information security risks (ISRs) that result from the use of NLP in ITO and proposes strategies to manage those ISRs. To gain insights into the problem, a qualitative research approach is followed using the case study method. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted from participants in three organisations in the ICT industry, engaged in an ITO relationship. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first study to investigate the use of NLP for enhancing ISRM in ITO.