Q: How has cyber technology created opportunities for workplace deviance?

In our current, modern age, many businesses have adopted technology into our everyday work life, whether its computers used to perform all of our tasks and assignments or having servers to host specific databases and programs. Everyone from customers, the leaders who uphold a business/organization, and workers/employees use technology to make life smoother and easier; however, it’s the latter half of these people, the employees, that also can cause controversy that technology may have in an organization. According to an article from Fortra Alert Logic (2022), people are “the weakest link” in terms of computer security and the safety of information systems. The reasoning for this is because humans, both accidentally and incidentally, are capable of breaking into and taking down an entire security system. This applies especially with employees as they’re the individuals that are constantly working with the system for the organization, and thus would be easy to accidentally make mistakes or to know the system enough to break it. Furthermore, without proper background checks in order to determine if employees follow safe computer practices, chances of security breaches can increase through misuse of computer technology alone from employees. These deviant actions can cost companies a lot, both in paying fines and damages, loss of reputation from users and customers, loss of jobs, and overall loss of data and private information. According to my teacher, Christopher Bowman, clearly the issue with a lot of security breaches is what’s in the “chair, not in the software”. Thankfully though, there are ways to mitigate these kinds of security breaches. First of, background checks for technology should be implemented before an employee is hired to identify their intentions and knowledge with computer safety. Secondly, employee training of security measures and warnings about email attacks should be implemented to reduce error and potential internal attacks. Other methods that can be used is to implement monetary rewards for those who follow security measures and to send reminders of security policies to employees every so often.

References:

• Staff, F. A. L. (2022, November 9). Why humans are the weakest link in Cybersecurity. Alert Logic. Retrieved February 16, 2023, from https://www.alertlogic.com/blog/why-humans-weakest-link-cybersecurity/